The Red Pyramid
by Wisdom and Sea
Summary: Sadie, Carter, Zia, and Walt were transported into a room with seven other strangers. Three books appear, along with a note. They are not allowed to leave until they read the Kane Chronicles.
1. Introduction

**Hehe, look at me, another story. I don't normally have two stories going at once, but I couldn't help myself. Plus there aren't many of these out here, and the ones that do exist are never finished. So, I decided to try my hand at one. I'm not very good at this type of thing, but I hope you enjoy it. **

**P.S. This is based after the Son of Sobek.**

Sadie POV

You know, it could've been a regular day. We were _so close _to having just _one _regular day. Kane luck, I guess.

Walt, Carter, Zia and I were in the library. Carter insisted we study up on random monsters, you know, just because.

And then the portal.

Honest, we didn't do anything, just sitting there reading (Quite dull, by the way.), when a portal just opened for no apparent reason and sucked us all up.

[No, Carter. It didn't make a sucking noise when it did.]

I landed while with as thump on top of Carter. I quickly stood up, though. I do have dignity.

I found that we weren't alone. Strangely, there was a group of kids with us. There were six of them. A blonde guy, a girl that had feathers braided into her hair, a Hispanic boy, a girl with gold eyes, a buff looking Asian guy, a girl with curly blonde hair, and a boy with messy black hair.

"Carter," I asked carefully. "What in the name of Ra is going on here?"

"Carter?" A foreign voice spoke up.

"Percy." Carter answered carefully. It wasn't a question.

How did my brother know this black-haired kid? I certainly hadn't seen him before.

I took in my surroundings. There were sofas pressed up against the walls and a ping pong table in the center. Odd.

This Percy cleared his throat. "Well, uh, I don't know what you guys are doing here but I'm Percy Jackson."

"Annabeth Chase." The girl with curly blonde hair said.

"Leo Valdez." The Hispanic boy flashed us a peace sign.

"Jason Grace." The blonde boy.

"Piper McLean." The girl with feathers in her hair smiled at us.

"Frank Zhang." The Asian guy.

"Hazel Levesque." The girl with gold eyes.

"Hello." I answered casually. "Sadie Kane."

"Walt Stone." Walt nodded at the group.

"Zia Rashid." Zia studied the group warily.

"Carter Kane." Carter was staring at Percy.

Percy nodded. "Well…"

In a bright flash, three books appeared on the ping pong table.

Annabeth walked over and picked up the top one. "_The Red Pyramid._" she read.

I froze. "Uh, what?"

Piper frowned at me. "What?"

I grabbed the book from Annabeth and flipped through it. Yup, it was it.

"Carter," I lifted the book to show him.

He nodded grimly. "I know."

"Um, are we supposed to read it?" Leo asked.

"Uh, no." I answered.

"And why is that?" Annabeth narrowed her eyes.

"None of your business." I answered coldly.

Jason came over and took the book. I glared at him.

Hazel called, "Uh, guys? The door's locked."

Percy tried the handle and cursed. "She's right."

Another flash, and a piece of paper appeared on the table. I picked it up and read aloud:

_Magicians and Demigods,_

_I have brought you here to get to know each other. I decided that to do that, you would read the Kane Chronicles. It's probably going to be uncomfortable, but too bad, you can't leave until you've finished. Have fun!_

_-Anonymous _

_P.S. Carter, Percy, please don't try to kill each other again. _

I frowned at the last bit. "Uh, excuse me?" I shot a look at my brother.

He looked a little guilty. "Does it matter?"

"To me! You can't just go off-"

Walt interrupted us. "How about we read? It's the only way out of this situation."

Jason opened it to the first page.

**Well, it wasn't the best intro. I will go on into the story, though, so see you there!**


	2. Chapter 1

**What's up? Here is the first chapter. I don't think it's the best, but I hope you like.**

**Disclaimer: I pretty much don't own anything here.**

**Chapter 1: A Death At The Needle. **

Leo snorted. "Sounds inviting."

**WE ONLY HAVE A FEW HOURS, so listen carefully. If you're hearing this story, you're already in danger. Sadie and I might be your only chance. Go to the school. Find the locker. I won't tell you which school or which locker, because if you're the right person, you'll find it. The combination is 13/32/33. By the time you finish listening, you'll know what those numbers mean. Just remember the story we're about to tell you isn't complete yet. How it ends will depend on you. **

"No pressure." Leo muttered.

**The most important thing: when you open the package and find what's inside, don't keep it longer than a week. Sure, it'll be tempting. I mean, it will grant you almost unlimited power.**

"Wait, _what?" _Percy asked.

"Doesn't matter. You'll see." Sadie answered.

**But if you possess it too long, it will consume you. Learn its secrets quickly and pass it on. Hide it for the next person, the way Sadie and I did for you. Then be prepared for your life to get very interesting. **

**Okay, Sadie is telling me to stop stalling and get on with the story. Fine. I guess it started in London, the night our dad blew up the British Museum. **

"What?!" Annabeth shrieked.

"Just keep reading." Carter said.

**My name is Carter Kane. I'm fourteen and my home is a** **suitcase. **

**You think I'm kidding? Since I was eight years old, my dad and I have traveled the world. I was born in L.A. but my dad's an archaeologist, so his work takes him all over. Mostly we go to Egypt, since that's his specialty. Go into a bookstore, find a book about Egypt, there's a pretty good chance it was written by Dr. Julius Kane. **

"Julius Kane is your dad?" Annabeth asked. "He's amazing!"

"_Was_ our dad." Sadie muttered.

No one answered.

**You want to know how Egyptians pulled the brains out of mummies, or built the pyramids, or cursed King Tut's tomb? My dad is your man. Of course, there are other reasons my dad moved around so much, but I didn't know his secret back then. **

"Spooky." Leo said.

**I didn't go to school. My dad homeschooled me, if you can call it "home" schooling when you don't have a home. He sort of taught me whatever he thought was important, so I learned a lot about Egypt and basketball stats and my dad's favorite musicians. I read a lot, too—pretty much anything I could get my hands on, from dad's history books to fantasy novels—because I spent a lot of time sitting around in hotels and airports and dig sites in foreign countries where I didn't know anybody. My dad was always telling me to put the book down and play some ball. You ever try to start a game of pick-up basketball in Aswan, Egypt? It's not easy. **

**Anyway, my dad trained me early to keep all my possessions in a single suitcase that fits in an airplane's overhead compartment. My dad packed the same way, except he was allowed an extra workbag for his archaeology tools. Rule number one: I was not allowed to look in his** **workbag. That's a rule I never broke until the day of the explosion.**

"I still can't believe you didn't look in it." Sadie said, exasperated.

**It happened on Christmas Eve. We were in London for visitation day with my sister, Sadie. **

"You're siblings?" Percy in between us.

Carter sighed. "Yes."

**See, Dad's only allowed two days a year with her—one in the winter, one in the summer—because our grandparents hate him. After our mom died, her parents (our grandparents) had this big court battle with Dad. After six lawyers, two fistfights, and a near fatal attack with a spatula (don't ask), **

"But-" Leo started.

"Don't ask." Both Carter and Sadie said.

**they won the right to keep Sadie with them in England. She was only six, two years younger than me, and they couldn't keep us both—at least that was their excuse for not taking me. So Sadie was raised as a British schoolkid, and I traveled around with my dad. We only saw Sadie twice a year, which was fine with me. **

**[Shut up, Sadie. Yes—I'm getting to that part.] **

Percy snickered.

**So anyway, my dad and I had just flown into Heathrow after a couple of delays. It was a drizzly, cold afternoon. The whole taxi ride into the city, my dad seemed kind of nervous. Now, my dad is a big guy. You wouldn't think anything could make him nervous. **

**He has dark brown skin like mine, piercing brown eyes, a bald head, and a goatee, so he looks like a buff evil scientist. That afternoon he wore his cashmere winter coat and his best brown suit, the one he used for public lectures. Usually he exudes so much confidence that he dominates any room he walks into, but sometimes—like that afternoon—I saw another side to him that I didn't really understand. He kept looking over his shoulder like we were being hunted.**

"**Dad?" I said as we were getting off the A-40. "What's wrong?" **

"**No sign of them," he muttered. Then he must've realized he'd spoken aloud, because he looked at me kind of startled. **

"**Nothing, Carter. Everything's fine."**

"It sounds so fine." Piper muttered.

**Which bothered me because my dad's a terrible liar. I always knew when he was hiding something, but I also knew no amount of pestering would get the truth out of him. He was probably trying to protect me, though from what I didn't know. Sometimes I wondered if he had some dark secret in his past, some old enemy following him, maybe; but the idea seemed ridiculous. Dad was just an archaeologist.**

"Is he, though?" Hazel wondered.

Nobody answered.

**The other thing that troubled me: Dad was clutching his **

**workbag. Usually when he does that, it means we're in danger. Like the time gunmen stormed our hotel in Cairo. I heard shots coming from the lobby and ran downstairs to check on my dad. By the time I got there, he was just calmly zipping up his workbag while three unconscious gunmen hung by their feet from the chandelier, their robes falling over their heads so you could see their boxer shorts. Dad claimed not to have witnessed anything, and in the end the police blamed a freak chandelier malfunction. **

"Awesome!" Leo exclaimed. "Was that your dad?"

"_Read!" _Sadie commanded.

**Another time, we got caught in a riot in Paris. My dad found the nearest parked car, pushed me into the backseat, and told me to stay down. I pressed myself against the floorboards and kept my eyes shut tight. I could hear Dad in the driver's seat, rummaging in his bag, mumbling something to himself while** **the mob yelled and destroyed things outside. A few minutes later he told me it was safe to get up. Every other car on the block had been overturned and set on fire. Our car had been freshly washed and polished, and several twenty-euro notes had been tucked under the windshield wipers. **

**Anyway, I'd come to respect the bag. It was our good luck charm. **

**But when my dad kept it close, it meant we were going to need good luck. We drove through the city center, heading east toward my grandparents' flat. We passed the golden gates of Buckingham Palace, the big stone column in Trafalgar Square. London is a pretty cool place, but after you've traveled for so long, all cities start to blend together. Other kids I meet sometimes say, "Wow, you're so lucky you get to travel so much." But it's not like we spend our time sightseeing or have a lot of money to travel in style. We've stayed in some pretty rough places, and we hardly ever stay anywhere longer than a few days. Most of the time it feels like we're fugitives rather than tourists. **

**I mean, you wouldn't think my dad's work was dangerous. He does lectures on topics like "Can Egyptian Magic Really Kill You?" and "Favorite Punishments in the Egyptian Underworld" and other stuff most people wouldn't care about. But like I said, there's that other side to him. He's always very cautious, checking every hotel room before he lets me walk into it. He'll dart into a museum to see some artifacts, take a few notes, and rush out again like he's afraid to be caught on the security cameras. **

"Hmm." Annabeth mused, brow furrowed.

"Hmm, indeed." Percy agreed. Everyone could hear the laughter in his voice.

**One time when I was younger, we raced across the Charles de Gaulle airport to catch a last-minute flight, and Dad didn't relax until the plane was off the ground, I asked him point blank what he was running from,**

"Really?" Sadie exclaimed. "_You _did that?"

"You already knew that." Carter grumbled.

**and he looked at me like I'd just pulled the pin out of a grenade. For a second I was scared he might actually tell me the truth. Then he said, "Carter, it's nothing." As if "nothing" were the most terrible thing in the world. **

**After that, I decided maybe it was better not to ask questions. **

**My grandparents, the Fausts, live in a housing development near Canary Wharf, right on the banks of the River Thames. The taxi let us off at the curb, and my dad asked the driver to wait. **

**We were halfway up the walk when Dad froze. He turned and looked behind us. **

"**What?" I asked. **

**Then I saw the man in the trench coat. He was across the street, leaning against a big dead tree.**

"That sounds ominous." Frank commented.

**He was barrel shaped, with skin the color of roasted coffee. His coat and black pinstriped suit looked expensive. He had long braided hair and wore a black fedora pulled down low over his dark round glasses. He reminded me of a jazz musician, the kind my dad would always drag me to see in concert. Even though I couldn't see his eyes, I got the impression he was watching us. He might've been an old friend or colleague of Dad's. No matter where we went, Dad was always running into people he knew. But it did seem strange that the guy was waiting here, outside my grandparents'. And he didn't look happy. **

"Who is he?" Frank asked.

"You'll see." Carter responded.

"**Carter," my dad said, "go on ahead." **

"**But—" **

"**Get your sister. I'll meet you back at the taxi." **

**He crossed the street toward the man in the trench coat, which left me with two choices: follow my dad and see what was going on, or do what I was told. **

**I decided on the slightly less dangerous path. I went to retrieve my sister. **

"Of course you did." Sadie muttered. "And how am I the less dangerous path?"

**Before I could even knock, Sadie opened the door.**

"**Late as usual," she said. **

**She was holding her cat, Muffin, who'd been a "going away" gift from Dad six years before. Muffin never seemed to get older or bigger. She had fuzzy yellow-and-black fur like a miniature leopard, alert yellow eyes, and pointy ears that were too tall for her head. A silver Egyptian pendant dangled from her collar. She didn't look anything like a muffin, but Sadie had been little when she named her, so I guess you have to cut her some slack. **

**Sadie hadn't changed much either since last summer.**

**[As I'm recording this, she's standing next to me, glaring, so I'd better be careful how I describe her.] **

Sade smirked.

**You would never guess she's my sister. First of all, she'd been living in England so long, she has a British accent. Second, she takes after our mom, who was white, so Sadie's skin is much lighter than mine. She has straight caramel-colored hair, not exactly blonde but not brown, which she usually dyes with streaks of bright colors. That day it had red streaks down the left side. Her eyes are blue. I'm serious. Blue eyes, just like our mom's. She's only twelve, but she's exactly as tall as me, which is really annoying. She was chewing gum as usual, dressed for her day out with Dad in battered jeans, a leather jacket, and combat boots, like she was going to a concert and was hoping to stomp on some people. She had headphones dangling around her neck in case we bored her.**

"You sound like Thalia, " Annabeth murmured.

**[Okay, she didn't hit me, so I guess I did an okay job of describing her.]**

"**Our plane was late," I told her. **

**She popped a bubble, rubbed Muffin's head, and tossed the cat inside. "Gran, going out!" **

**From somewhere in the house, Grandma Faust said something I couldn't make out, probably "Don't let them in!" **

"Unfortunately, that's what she said." Sadie sighed.

Carter winced. Everyone was silent.

**Sadie closed the door and regarded me as if I were a dead mouse her cat had just dragged in. "So, here you are again." **

"**Yep." **

"**Come on, then." She sighed. "Let's get on with it." **

**That's the way she was. No "Hi, how you been the last six months? So glad to see you!" or anything. But that was okay with me. When you only see each other twice a year, it's like you're distant cousins rather than siblings. We had absolutely nothing in common except our parents. We trudged down the steps. I was thinking how she smelled like a combination of old people's house and bubble gum when she stopped so abruptly, I ran into her. **

"**Who's that?" she asked.**

**I'd almost forgotten about the dude in the trench coat. He and my dad were standing across the street next to the big tree, having what looked like a serious argument. Dad's back was turned so I couldn't see his face, but he gestured with his hands like he does when he's agitated. The other guy scowled and shook his head. **

"**Dunno," I said. "He was there when we pulled up." **

"**He looks familiar." Sadie frowned like she was trying to remember. "Come on." **

"**Dad wants us to wait in the cab," I said, even though I knew it was no use. Sadie was already on the move. **

**Instead of going straight across the street, she dashed up the sidewalk for half a block, ducking behind cars, then crossed to the opposite side and crouched under a low stone wall. She started sneaking toward our dad. I didn't have much choice but to follow her example, even though it made me feel kind of stupid. **

"**Six years in England," I muttered, "and she thinks she's James Bond." **

Leo snickered. Sadie shot him a death glare

**Sadie swatted me without looking back and kept creeping forward. A couple more steps and we were right behind the big dead tree. I could hear my dad on the other side, saying, **

"—**have to, Amos. You know it's the right thing." **

"**No," said the other man, who must've been Amos. His voice was deep and even—very insistent. His accent was American. **

"**If I don't stop you, Julius, they will. The Per Ankh is shadowing you." **

"What's that?" Hazel asked.

"You'll see," Walt answered.

**Sadie turned to me and mouthed the words "Per what?"**

**I shook my head, just as mystified. **

"**Let's get out of here," I whispered, because I figured we'd be spotted any minute and get in serious trouble. Sadie, of course, ignored me. **

"**They don't know my plan," my father was saying. "By the time they figure it out—"**

"**And the children?" Amos asked. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. "What about them?" **

"**I've made arrangements to protect them," my dad said. "Besides, if I don't do this, we're all in danger. Now, back off."**

"**I can't, Julius." **

"**Then it's a duel you want?" Dad's tone turned deadly serious. "You never could beat me, Amos." **

**I hadn't seen my dad get violent since the Great Spatula Incident, **

"The Great Spatula Incident? Telllll uusss." Percy begged.

"Definitely not," Carter replied.

**and I wasn't anxious to see a repeat of that, but the two men seemed to be edging toward a fight. Before I could react, Sadie popped up and shouted, "Dad!" **

Annabeth shook her head. "You could've learned some useful information."

**He looked surprised when she tackle-hugged him, but not nearly as surprised as the other guy, Amos. He backed up so quickly, he tripped over his own trench coat. He'd taken off his glasses. I couldn't help thinking that Sadie was right. He did look familiar—like a very distant memory. **

"**I—I must be going," he said. He straightened his fedora and lumbered down the road. **

**Our dad watched him go. He kept one arm protectively around Sadie and one hand inside the workbag slung over his shoulder. Finally, when Amos disappeared around the corner, Dad relaxed. He took his hand out of the bag and smiled at Sadie.**

"**Hello, sweetheart."**

**Sadie pushed away from him and crossed her arms. "Oh, now it's sweetheart, is it? You're late. Visitation Day's nearly over! And what was that about? Who's Amos, and what's the Per Ankh?" **

**Dad stiffened. He glanced at me like he was wondering how much we'd overheard. "It's nothing," he said, trying to sound upbeat. "I have a wonderful evening planned. Who'd like a private tour of the British Museum?"**

**Sadie slumped in the back of the taxi between Dad and me. "I can't believe it," she grumbled. "One evening together, and you want to do research."**

**Dad tried for a smile. "Sweetheart, it'll be fun. The curator of the Egyptian collection personally invited—" **

"**Right, big surprise." Sadie blew a strand of red-streaked hair out of her face. "Christmas Eve, and we're going to see some moldy old relics from Egypt. Do you ever think about anything else?" **

"Moldy old relics?" Annabeth frowned.

**Dad didn't get mad. He never gets mad at Sadie. He just stared out the window at the darkening sky and the rain.**

"**Yes," he said quietly. "I do." **

**Whenever Dad got quiet like that and stared off into nowhere, I knew he was thinking about our mom. The last few months, it had been happening a lot. I'd walk into our hotel room and find him with his cell phone in his hands, Mom's picture smiling up at him from the screen—her hair tucked under a headscarf, her blue eyes startlingly bright against the desert backdrop. **

**Or we'd be at some dig site. I'd see Dad staring at the horizon, and I'd know he was remembering how he'd met her—two young scientists in the Valley of the Kings, on a dig to discover a lost tomb. Dad was an Egyptologist. Mom was an anthropologist looking for ancient DNA. He'd told me the story a thousand times. **

**Our taxi snaked its way along the banks of the Thames. Just past Waterloo Bridge, my dad tensed. **

"**Driver," he said. "Stop here a moment." **

**The cabbie pulled over on the Victoria Embankment. **

"**What is it, Dad?" I asked. **

**He got out of the cab like he hadn't heard me. When Sadie and I joined him on the sidewalk, he was staring up at Cleopatra's Needle. **

"_Death At the Needle._ Please tell me someone isn't going to die." Piper said.

**In case you've never seen it: the Needle is an obelisk, not a needle, and it doesn't have anything to do with Cleopatra. I guess the British just thought the name sounded cool when they brought it to London. It's about seventy feet tall, which would've been really impressive back in Ancient Egypt, but on the Thames, with all the tall buildings around, it looks small and sad. You could drive right by it and not even realize you'd just passed something that was a thousand years older than the city of London. **

"**God." Sadie walked around in a frustrated circle. "Do we have to stop for every monument?" **

**My dad stared at the top of the obelisk. "I had to see it again," he murmured. "Where it happened…" **

"Where _what _happened? Give us some answers!" Piper said.

"You'll see." Carter replied.

**A freezing wind blew off the river. I wanted to get back in the cab, but my dad was really starting to worry me. I'd never seen him so distracted. **

"**What, Dad?" I asked. "What happened here?"**

"**The last place I saw her."**

**Sadie stopped pacing. She scowled at me uncertainly, then back at Dad. "Hang on. Do you mean Mum?"**

Absolute silence.

**Dad brushed Sadie's hair behind her ear, and she was so surprised, she didn't even push him away. **

**I felt like the rain had frozen me solid. Mom's death had always been a forbidden subject. I knew she'd died in an accident in London. I knew my grandparents blamed my dad. But no one would ever tell us the details. I'd given up asking my dad, partly because it made him so sad, partly because he absolutely refused to tell me anything. "When you're older" was all he would say, which was the most frustrating response ever. **

"**You're telling us she died here," I said. "At Cleopatra's Needle? What happened?" **

**He lowered his head.**

"**Dad!" Sadie protested. "I go past this every day, and you mean to say—all this time—and I didn't even know?" **

"**Do you still have your cat?" Dad asked her, which seemed like a really stupid question.**

"Bast would find that rude." Sadie grinned.

"Whatever," Cater grumbled.

"**Of course I've still got the cat!" she said. "What does that have to do with anything?"**

"**And your amulet?"**

**Sadie's hand went to her neck. When we were little, right before Sadie went to live with our grandparents, Dad had given us both Egyptian amulets. Mine was an Eye of Horus, which was a popular protection symbol in Ancient Egypt. In fact my dad says the modern pharmacist's symbol is a simplified version of the Eye of Horus, because medicine is supposed to protect you. **

**Anyway, I always wore my amulet under my shirt, but I figured Sadie would've lost hers or thrown it away. To my surprise, she nodded. **

"'**Course I have it, Dad, but don't change the subject. Gran's always going on about how you caused Mum's death. That's not true, is it?"**

**We waited. For once, Sadie and I wanted exactly the same thing—the truth. **

"**The night your mother died," my father started, "here at the Needle—"**

**A sudden flash illuminated the embankment. I turned, half blind, and just for a moment I glimpsed two figures: a tall pale man with a forked beard and wearing cream-colored robes, and a coppery-skinned girl in dark blue robes and a headscarf—the kind of clothes I'd seen hundreds of times in Egypt. They were just standing there side by side, not twenty feet away, watching us. Then the light faded. The figures melted into a fuzzy afterimage. When my eyes readjusted to the darkness, they were gone.**

Tension filled the room.

"**Um…" Sadie said nervously. "Did you just see that?"**

"**Get in the cab," my dad said, pushing us toward the curb. "We're out of time." **

"Tell us what that means." Leo groaned.

**From that point on, Dad clammed up.**

"**This isn't the place to talk," he said, glancing behind us. He'd promised the cabbie an extra ten pounds if he got us to the museum in under five minutes, and the cabbie was doing his best.**

"**Dad," I tried, "those people at the river—"**

"**And the other bloke, Amos," Sadie said. "Are they Egyptian police or something?" **

Zia grimaced. Those who noticed wondered what that meant.

"**Look, both of you," Dad said, "I'm going to need your help tonight. I know it's hard, but you have to be patient. I'll explain everything, I promise, after we get to the museum. I'm going to make everything right again." **

"**What do you mean?" Sadie insisted. "Make what right?"**

**Dad's expression was more than sad. It was almost guilty. With a chill, I thought about what Sadie had said: about our grandparents blaming him for Mom's death. That couldn't be what he was talking about, could it? The cabbie swerved onto Great Russell Street and screeched to a halt in front of the museum's main gates.**

"**Just follow my lead," Dad told us. "When we meet the curator, act normal."**

**I was thinking that Sadie never acted normal, **

"Hey!" Sadie complained.

**but I decided not to say anything. We climbed out of the cab. I got our luggage while Dad paid the driver with a big wad of cash. Then he did something strange. He threw a handful of small objects into the backseat—they looked like stones, but it was too dark for me to be sure.**

"**Keep driving," he told the cabbie. "Take us to Chelsea." That made no sense since we were already out of the cab, but the driver sped off. I glanced at Dad, then back at the cab, and before it turned the corner and disappeared in the dark, I caught a weird glimpse of three passengers in the backseat: a man and two kids. **

"What is going on?" Annabeth demanded.

"Just wait." Carter said.

**I blinked. There was no way the cab could've picked up another fare so fast.**

"**Dad—" **

"**London cabs don't stay empty very long," he said matter-of-factly. "Come along, kids."**

**He marched off through the wrought iron gates. For a second, Sadie and I hesitated. **

"**Carter, what is going on?" I shook my head.**

"**I'm not sure I want to know." **

"**Well, stay out here in the cold if you want, but I'm not leaving without an explanation." She turned and marched after our dad. **

**Looking back on it, I should've run. I should've dragged Sadie out of there and gotten as far away as possible. Instead I followed her through the gates.**

"That's the first chapter." Jason said.

"Well." Percy said.

"Well, what?" Sadie demanded.

"I don't know. But so far, you seem very confused." Percy mused.

"No duh, Sherlock!" Sadie snapped.

"Or maybe James Bond?" Leo wriggled his eyebrows.

Before Sadie could slap him, Jason broke in. "Who's going to read next?"

"I will." Annabeth volunteered.

Jason handed her the book and she began.

**Well, how was it? Be honest. I accept any criticism, and welcome it. I would like to know how to improve. Anyway, I hope you liked it.**

**Replies…**

**kiwikraz: Really? Maybe you haven't really looked. But I enjoy these types of stories. Shoutout to Stand Ward and Queen (I think that's the username) for the story **_**Assemble. **_**If you like the Avengers, the story is about them watching their movies. It's pretty cool. And maybe, but it might be a separate story. Thanks for the review!**

**Matt: It's fine, yeah, I know realize that lol. Anyway, I hope you liked it, thanks for the review!**


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2, everyone! Sorry for the wait. But may I say, wow! Thanks for all the reviews! Anyway, hope you like.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own anything.**

Chapter 2

** R**

**2\. An Explosion for Christmas **

"That sounds amazing." Leo grinned.

**I'D BEEN TO THE BRITISH MUSEUM BEFORE. In fact I've been to more museums than I like to admit—it makes me sound like a total geek. [That's Sadie in the background, yelling that I am a total geek. Thanks, Sis.]**

"You are." Sadie smiles at Carter while everyone laughed.

**Anyway, the museum was closed and completely dark, but the curator and two security guards were waiting for us on the front steps. **

"**Dr. Kane!" The curator was a greasy little dude in a cheap suit. I'd seen mummies with more hair and better teeth. He shook my dad's hand like he was meeting a rock star. "Your last paper on Imhotep—brilliant! I don't know how you translated those spells!" **

"**Im-ho-who?" Sadie muttered to me. **

"**Imhotep," I said. "High priest, architect. Some say he was a magician.**

"Wasn't that on the piece of paper earlier? Magicians and demigods?" Jason asked.

Carter, Sadie, Zia and Walt were quiet, which seemed to be an answer on its own. They knew that the secret of the House of Life would be discovered, and couldn't decide whether or not it was a bad thing.

**Designed the first step pyramid. You know." **

"**Don't know," Sadie said. "Don't care. But thanks."**

**Dad expressed his gratitude to the curator for hosting us on a holiday. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. "Dr. Martin, I'd like you to meet Carter and Sadie." **

"**Ah! Your son, obviously, and—" The curator looked hesitantly at Sadie. "And this young lady?"**

"**My daughter," Dad said. **

**Dr. Martin's stare went temporarily blank. Doesn't matter how open-minded or polite people think they are, there's always that moment of confusion that flashes across their faces when they realize Sadie is part of our family. I hate it, but over the years I've come to expect it. **

"Sorry." Percy mumbled.

"It's fine." Carter answered.

**The curator regained his smile. "Yes, yes, of course. Right this way, Dr. Kane. We're very honored!" **

**The security guards locked the doors behind us. They took our luggage, then one of them reached for Dad's workbag. **

"**Ah, no," Dad said with a tight smile. "I'll keep this one." **

Frank furrowed his brow. "Why?"

**The guards stayed in the foyer as we followed the curator into the Great Court. It was ominous at night. Dim light from the glass-domed ceiling cast crosshatched shadows across the walls like a giant spiderweb. Our footsteps clicked on the white marble floor. **

"**So," Dad said, "the stone." **

"**Yes!" the curator said. "Though I can't imagine what new information you could glean from it. It's been studied to death—our most famous artifact, of course."**

"**Of course," Dad said. "But you may be surprised." **

"**What's he on about now?" Sadie whispered to me. **

**I didn't answer. I had a sneaking suspicion what stone they were talking about, but I couldn't figure out why Dad would drag us out on Christmas Eve to see it. I wondered what he'd been about to tell us at Cleopatra's Needle—something about our mother and the night she died. And why did he keep glancing around as if he expected those strange people we'd seen at the Needle to pop up again? We were locked in a museum surrounded by guards and high-tech security. Nobody could bother us in here—I hoped.**

**We turned left into the Egyptian wing. The walls were lined with massive statues of the pharaohs and gods, but my dad bypassed them all and went straight for the main attraction in the middle of the room. **

"**Beautiful," my father murmured. "And it's not a replica?" **

"**No, no," the curator promised. "We don't always keep the actual stone on display, but for you—this is quite real." **

**We were staring at a slab of dark gray rock about three feet tall and two feet wide. It sat on a pedestal, encased in a glass box. The flat surface of the stone was chiseled with three distinct bands of writing. The top part was Ancient Egyptian picture writing: hieroglyphics. The middle section…I had to rack my brain to remember what my dad called it: Demotic, a kind of writing from the period when the Greeks controlled Egypt and a lot of Greek words got mixed into Egyptian. The last lines were in Greek. **

"The Rosetta Stone," Annabeth pauses to say. "I've always wanted to see it."

Sadie couldn't stop the small laugh that escaped her mouth. Everyone but the other magicians looked at her weirdly.

"**The Rosetta Stone," I said. **

"**Isn't that a computer program?" Sadie asked.**

**I wanted to tell her how stupid she was,**

"Rude," Sadie scoffed.

**but the curator cut me off with a nervous laugh. **

"**Young lady, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics! It was discovered by Napoleon's army in 1799 and—" **

"**Oh, right," Sadie said. "I remember now." **

**I knew she was just saying that to shut him up, but my dad wouldn't let it go. **

"**Sadie," he said, "until this stone was discovered, regular mortals…**

"Regular mortals?" Percy looked suspiciously at us.

The magicians didn't answer.

**er, I mean, no one had been able to read hieroglyphics for centuries. The written language of Egypt had been completely forgotten. Then an Englishman named Thomas Young proved that the Rosetta Stone's three languages all conveyed the same message. A Frenchman named Champollion took up the work and cracked the code of hieroglyphics." **

"Champollion." Sadie grinned. Carter smiled to himself. The demigods looked confused.

**Sadie chewed her gum, unimpressed. "What's it say, then?" Dad shrugged. **

"**Nothing important. It's basically a thank-you letter from some priests to King Ptolemy V. When it was first carved, the stone was no big deal. But over the centuries…over the centuries it has become a powerful symbol. Perhaps the most important connection between Ancient Egypt and the modern world. I was a fool not to realize its potential sooner." **

"Potential for what?" Hazel asked.

**He'd lost me, and apparently the curator too. **

"**Dr. Kane?" he asked. "Are you quite all right?" Dad breathed deeply. **

"**My apologies, Dr. Martin. I was just…thinking aloud. If I could have the glass removed? And if you could bring me the papers I asked for from your archives." **

**Dr. Martin nodded. He pressed a code into a small remote control, and the front of the glass box clicked open.**

"**It will take a few minutes to retrieve the notes," Dr. Martin said. "For anyone else, I would hesitate to grant unguarded access to the stone, as you've requested. I trust you'll be careful." He glanced at us kids like we were troublemakers. **

Carter and Sadie both laughed at this.

"No, we promise nothing will happen to the stone." Sadie said sarcastically.

"**We'll be careful," Dad promised. As soon as Dr. Martin's steps receded, Dad turned to us with a frantic look in his eyes. "Children, this is very important. You have to stay out of this room." He slipped his workbag off his shoulder and unzipped it just enough to pull out a bike chain and padlock. "Follow Dr. Martin. You'll find his office at the end of the Great Court on the left. There's only one entrance. Once he's inside, wrap this around the door handles and lock it tight. We need to delay him."**

"Your father told you to chain the curator in his office?" Piper raised her eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Yup." Sadie answered.

"**You want us to lock him in?" Sadie asked, suddenly interested. "Brilliant!" **

"**Dad," I said, "what's going on?" **

"**We don't have time for explanations," he said. "This will be our only chance. They're coming." **

"**Who's coming?" Sadie asked. He took Sadie by the shoulders. **

"**Sweetheart, I love you. And I'm sorry…I'm sorry for many things, but there's no time now. If this works, I promise I'll make everything better for all of us. Carter, you're my brave man. You have to trust me. Remember, lock up Dr. Martin. Then stay out of this room!" **

**Chaining the curator's door was easy. But as soon as we'd finished, we looked back the way we'd come and saw blue light streaming from the Egyptian gallery, as if our dad had installed a giant glowing aquarium. **

"A giant glowing aquarium?" Leo snickered.

**Sadie locked eyes with me. **

"**Honestly, do you have any idea what he's up to?" **

"**None," I said. "But he's been acting strange lately. Thinking a lot about Mom. He keeps her picture…" I didn't want to say more. Fortunately Sadie nodded like she understood.**

"**What's in his workbag?" she asked. **

"**I don't know. He told me never to look." **

**Sadie raised an eyebrow. "And you never did? God, that is so like you, Carter. You're hopeless."**

"You are." Sadie smirked.

**I wanted to defend myself, but just then a tremor shook the floor. **

**Startled, Sadie grabbed my arm. "He told us to stay put. I suppose you're going to follow that order too?"**

**Actually, that order was sounding pretty good to me, but Sadie sprinted down the hall, and after a moment's hesitation, I ran after her. When we reached the entrance of the Egyptian gallery, we stopped dead in our tracks. **

"I'm betting there was a reason he told you to stay out?" Hazel inquired.

"Yeah, and I kinda wished we'd listened to him." Carter muttered.

**Our dad stood in front of the Rosetta Stone with his back to us. A blue circle glowed on the floor around him, as if someone had switched on hidden neon tubes in the floor. My dad had thrown off his overcoat. His workbag lay open at his feet, revealing a wooden box about two feet long, painted with Egyptian images. **

"**What's he holding?" Sadie whispered to me. "Is that a boomerang?"**

**Sure enough, when Dad raised his hand, he was brandishing a curved white stick. It did look like a boomerang. But instead of throwing the stick, he touched it to the Rosetta Stone. Sadie caught her breath. Dad was writing on the stone. Wherever the boomerang made contact, glowing blue lines appeared on the granite. Hieroglyphs. **

"_Egyptian magic." _Annabeth thought, but said nothing.

**It made no sense. How could he write glowing words with a stick? But the image was bright and clear: ram's horns above a box and an X.**

"**Open," Sadie murmured.**

**I stared at her, because it sounded like she had just translated the word, but that was impossible. I'd been hanging around Dad for years, and even I could read only a few hieroglyphs. They are seriously hard to learn.**

**Dad raised his arms. He chanted: "Wo-seer, i-ei." **

**And two more hieroglyphic symbols burned blue against the surface of the Rosetta Stone. As stunned as I was, I recognized the first symbol. It was the name of the Egyptian god of the dead. **

"**Wo-seer," I whispered. I'd never heard it pronounced that way, but I knew what it meant. "Osiris."**

"**Osiris, come," Sadie said, as if in a trance. Then her eyes widened. "No!" she shouted. "Dad, no!"**

**Our father turned in surprise. He started to say, "Children—" but it was too late. The ground rumbled. The blue light turned to searing white, and the Rosetta Stone exploded. **

There was a beat of silence, then Annabeth started stating the importance of artifacts. Leo was grinning and saying, "Awsome." But mostly, the demigods were confused.

"Continue!" Cater shouted over the din. Annabeth begrudgingly obliged.

**When I regained consciousness, the first thing I heard was laughter—horrible, gleeful laughter mixed with the blare of the museum's security alarms. **

"That's never good," Percy muttered.

**I felt like I'd just been run over by a tractor. I sat up, dazed, and spit a piece of Rosetta Stone out of my mouth. The gallery was in ruins. Waves of fire rippled in pools along the floor. Giant statues had toppled. Sarcophagi had been knocked off their pedestals. Pieces of the Rosetta Stone had exploded outward with such force that they'd embedded themselves in the columns, the walls, the other exhibits.**

**Sadie was passed out next to me, but she looked unharmed. I shook her shoulder, and she grunted. "Ugh." **

**In front of us, where the Rosetta Stone had been, stood a smoking, sheared-off pedestal. The floor was blackened in a starburst pattern, except for the glowing blue circle around our father. He was facing our direction, but he didn't seem to be looking at us. A bloody cut ran across his scalp. He gripped the boomerang tightly.**

**I didn't understand what he was looking at. Then the horrible laughter echoed around the room again, and I realized it was coming from right in front of me. **

**Something stood between our father and us. At first, I could barely make it out—just a flicker of heat. But as I concentrated, it took on a vague form—the fiery outline of a man. He was taller than Dad, and his laugh cut through me like a chainsaw.**

Everyone tensed.

"**Well done," he said to my father. "Very well done, Julius." **

"**You were not summoned!" My father's voice trembled. He held up the boomerang, but the fiery man flicked one finger, and the stick flew from Dad's hand, shattering against the wall.**

"**I am never summoned, Julius," the man purred. "But when you open a door, you must be prepared for guests to walk through." **

"**Back to the Duat!"**

"The what?" Frank asked.

No one answered.

**my father roared. "I have the power of the Great King!" **

"**Oh, scary," the fiery man said with amusement. "And even if you knew how to use that power, which you do not, he was never my match. I am the strongest. Now you will share his fate."**

**I couldn't make sense of anything, but I knew that I had to help my dad. I tried to pick up the nearest chunk of stone, but I was so terrified my fingers felt frozen and numb. My hands were useless.**

**Dad shot me a silent look of warning: Get out. I realized he was intentionally keeping the fiery man's back to us, hoping Sadie and I would escape unnoticed. **

**Sadie was still groggy. I managed to drag her behind a column, into the shadows. When she started to protest, I clamped my hand over her mouth. That woke her up. She saw what was happening and stopped fighting. **

**Alarms blared. Fire circled around the doorways of the gallery. The guards had to be on their way, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing for us.**

"Not really." Sadie said cheerfully.

**Dad crouched to the floor, keeping his eyes on his enemy, and opened his painted wooden box. He brought out a small rod like a ruler. He muttered something under his breath and the rod elongated into a wooden staff as tall as he was. Sadie made a squeaking sound. I couldn't believe my eyes either, but things only got weirder. **

**Dad threw his staff at the fiery man's feet, and it changed into an enormous serpent—ten feet long and as big around as I was—with coppery scales and glowing red eyes. It lunged at the fiery man, who effortlessly grabbed the serpent by its neck. **

"I am so confused." Jason muttered.

"We all are." Piper agreed.

**The man's hand burst into white-hot flames, and the snake burned to ashes. **

"**An old trick, Julius," the fiery man chided. **

**My dad glanced at us, silently urging us again to run. Part of me refused to believe any of this was real. Maybe I was unconscious, having a nightmare. Next to me, Sadie picked up a chunk of stone. **

"**How many?" my dad asked quickly, trying to keep the fiery man's attention. "How many did I release?"**

"How many of what?" Leo asked.

"Gods." Carter answered shortly.

That stunned the demigods into silence.

"**Why, all five," the man said, as if explaining something to a child. "You should know we're a package deal, Julius. Soon I'll release even more, and they'll be very grateful. I shall be named king again." **

"**The Demon Days," my father said. "They'll stop you before it's too late." **

**The fiery man laughed. "You think the House can stop me? Those old fools can't even stop arguing among themselves. **

"The House?" Piper wondered.

**Now let the story be told anew. And this time you shall never rise!"**

**The fiery man waved his hand. The blue circle at Dad's feet went dark. Dad grabbed for his toolbox, but it skittered across the floor. "Good-bye, Osiris," the fiery man said.**

Zia squeezed Carter's hand, knowing reliving this was hard for him.

**With another flick of his hand, he conjured a glowing coffin around our dad. At first it was transparent, but as our father struggled and pounded on its sides, the coffin became more and more solid—a golden Egyptian sarcophagus inlaid with jewels. My dad caught my eyes one last time, and mouthed the word Run! before the coffin sank into the floor, as if the ground had turned to water. **

"**Dad!" I screamed. Sadie threw her stone, but it sailed harmlessly through the fiery man's head. He turned, and for one terrible moment, his face appeared in the flames. **

**What I saw made no sense. It was as if someone had superimposed two different faces on top of each other—one almost human, with pale skin, cruel, angular features, and glowing red eyes, the other like an animal with dark fur and sharp fangs. Worse than a dog or a wolf or a lion—some animal I'd never seen before. Those red eyes stared at me, and I knew I was going to die. **

"We all have those moments." Percy said.

**Behind me, heavy footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the Great Court. Voices were barking orders. The security guards, maybe the police—but they'd never get here in time. **

**The fiery man lunged at us. A few inches from my face, something shoved him backward. The air sparked with electricity. The amulet around my neck grew uncomfortably hot. **

**The fiery man hissed, regarding me more carefully. "So…it's you." **

**The building shook again. At the opposite end of the room, part of the wall exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Two people stepped through the gap—the man and the girl we'd seen at the Needle, their robes swirling around them. Both of them held staffs. **

**The fiery man snarled. He looked at me one last time and said, "Soon, boy." **

**Then the entire room erupted in flames. A blast of heat sucked all the air of out my lungs and I crumpled to the floor. **

**The last thing I remember, the man with the forked beard and the girl in blue were standing over me. I heard the security guards running and shouting, getting closer. The girl crouched over me and drew a long curved knife from her belt. **

"**We must act quickly," she told the man.**

"Sorry," Zia said with a sheepish smile.

Sadie shrugged. "It wasn't you."

The demigods looked at each other, baffled.

"**Not yet," he said with some reluctance. His thick accent sounded French. "We must be sure before we destroy them." **

**I closed my eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.**

"That's the end of the chapter." Annabeth said.

"So," Said stretched. "Thoughts, comments, concerns?"

"Looks like you guys have a lot of enemies." Jason pursed his lips.

"Yup," Sadie answered, popping the 'p'.

"What was that thing your father accidentally released?" Annabeth looked at Carter. "You said it was a god."

Carter cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Uh, yeah."

Hazel looked at Zia. "Were you the girl wanting to kill them?"

Zia smiled a little. "Sort of. It's complicated."

"It seems a lot of things are complicated." Frank commented.

Walt shrugged. "True."

"Who wants to read next?" Annabeth asked.

"I will." Hazel took the book.

**Welp, I hope you liked it. **

**Replies…**

**kiwikraz: Yeah, you should check it out. Yup, I'm planning on it. So this story will be a long one. And I will always acknowledge your existence, don't worry.**

**graciekane: Here ya go! I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for the review!**

**FrankZhangofBows: I'm glad you do! Thanks for the review!**

**s27lavh0526: Well, can't say it was my idea, but I really like these stories. Thanks for the review!**


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3, my dudes! Hope you like!**

Chapter 3

**3\. Imprisoned with My Cat **

**[Give me the bloody mic.] **

Everyone chuckled.

**Hullo. Sadie here. My brother's a rubbish storyteller. Sorry about that. But now you've got me, so all is well. Let's see. The explosion. Rosetta Stone in a billion pieces. Fiery evil bloke. Dad boxed in a coffin. Creepy Frenchman and Arab girl with the knife. Us passing out. Right.**

**So when I woke up, the police were rushing about as you might expect. They separated me from my brother. I didn't really mind that part. He's a pain anyway. But they locked me in the curator's office for ages. And yes, they used our bicycle chain to do it. Cretins. **

More laughter.

**I was shattered, of course. I'd just been knocked out by a fiery whatever-it-was. I'd watched my dad get packed in a sarcophagus and shot through the floor. I tried to tell the police about all that, but did they care? No.**

"They never do." Percy agreed..

**Worst of all: I had a lingering chill, as if someone was pushing ice-cold needles into the back of my neck. It had started when I looked at those blue glowing words Dad had drawn on the Rosetta Stone and I knew what they meant. A family disease, perhaps? Can knowledge of boring Egyptian stuff be hereditary?**

"Maybe," Carter teased. Sadie glared, but with a faint smile on her face.

**With my luck. **

**Long after my gum had gone stale, a policewoman finally retrieved me from the curator's office. She asked me no questions. She just trundled me into a police car and took me home. Even then, I wasn't allowed to explain to Gran and Gramps. The policewoman just tossed me into my room and I waited. And waited. I don't like waiting. **

Walt laughed a little at that, along with some of the demigods, and Sadie huffed, "I don't!"

**I paced the floor. My room was nothing posh, just an attic space with a window and a bed and a desk. There wasn't much to do. Muffin sniffed my legs and her tail puffed up like a bottlebrush. I suppose she doesn't fancy the smell of museums. She hissed and disappeared under the bed. **

"**Thanks a lot," I muttered. I opened the door, but the policewoman was standing guard. **

"**The inspector will be with you in a moment," she told me. "Please stay inside." I could see downstairs—just a glimpse of Gramps pacing the room, wringing his hands, while Carter and a police inspector talked on the sofa. I couldn't make out what they were saying.**

"**Could I just use the loo?" I asked the nice officer. **

"**No." She closed the door in my face. As if I might rig an explosion in the toilet. Honestly.**

Leo snickered. "That would be great."

**I dug out my iPod and scrolled through my playlist. Nothing struck me. I threw it on my bed in disgust. When I'm too distracted for music, that is a very sad thing. I wondered why Carter got to talk to the police first. It wasn't fair. **

Carter raised his eyebrows at Sadie, and she scowled at him.

**I fiddled with the necklace Dad had given me. I'd never been sure what the symbol meant. Carter's was obviously an eye, but mine looked a bit like an angel, or perhaps a killer alien robot. Why on earth had Dad asked if I still had it? Of course I still had it. It was the only gift he'd ever given me. Well, apart from Muffin, and with the cat's attitude, I'm not sure I would call her a proper gift. **

Carter smiled. "You're lucky Bast isn't here."

Sadie smirked.

**Dad had practically abandoned me at age six, after all. The necklace was my one link to him. On good days I would stare at it and remember him fondly. On bad days (which were much more frequent) I would fling it across the room and stomp on it and curse him for not being around, which I found quite therapeutic. **

A couple snickers went around the room. Walt grinned at Sadie, saying, "I'm sure Isis loved it, too"

Sadie snorted, and Annabeth frowned.

"Isis, like the terrorists?"

Sadie burst out laughing at that.

**But in the end, I always put it back on. **

**At any rate, during the weirdness at the museum—and I'm not making this up—the necklace got hotter. I nearly took it off, but I couldn't help wondering if it truly was protecting me somehow. I'll make things right, Dad had said, with that guilty look he often gives me.**

**Well, colossal fail, Dad. **

Once more, everyone laughed. Sadie's narrorations were great at releasing tension.

**What had he been thinking? I wanted to believe it had all been a bad dream: the glowing hieroglyphs, the snake staff, the coffin. Things like that simply don't happen. But I knew better. I couldn't dream anything as horrifying as that fiery man's face when he'd turned on us. "Soon, boy," he'd told Carter, as if he intended to track us down. Just the idea made my hands tremble. **

"That would have been terrifying," Piper said.

"You have no idea." Sadie replied.

The demigods looked a little like they wanted to laugh. The magicians looked at each other, confused.

**I also couldn't help wondering about our stop at Cleopatra's Needle, how Dad had insisted on seeing it, as if he were steeling his courage, as if what he did at the British Museum had something to do with my mum. My eyes wandered across my room and fixed on my desk. **_**No,**_ **I thought. **_**Not going to do it. **_

**But I walked over and opened the drawer. I shoved aside a few old mags, my stash of sweets, a stack of maths homework I'd forgotten to hand in, and a few pictures of me and my mates Liz and Emma trying on ridiculous hats in Camden Market. And there at the bottom of it all was the picture of Mum.**

Sadie smiled sadly.

**Gran and Gramps have loads of pictures. They keep a shrine to Ruby in the hall cupboard—Mum's childhood artwork, her O-level results, her graduation picture from university, her favorite jewelry. It's quite mental. I was determined not to be like them, living in the past. I barely remembered Mum, after all, and nothing could change the fact she was dead.**

The Kane siblings winced at that comment.

**But I did keep one picture. It was of Mum and me at our house in Los Angeles, just after I was born. She stood out on the balcony, the Pacific Ocean behind her, holding a wrinkled pudgy lump of baby that would some day grow up to be yours truly. Baby me was not much to look at, but Mum was gorgeous, even in shorts and a tattered T-shirt. Her eyes were deep blue. Her blond hair was clipped back. Her skin was perfect. Quite depressing compared to mine. People always say I look like her, but I couldn't even get the spot off my chin much less look so mature and beautiful.**

**[Stop smirking, Carter.]**

Carter was indeed smirking at that moment. His sister was very strange.

**The photo fascinated me because I hardly remembered our lives together at all. But the main reason I'd kept the photo was because of the symbol on Mum's T-shirt: one of those life symbols—an ankh. My dead mother wearing the symbol for life. Nothing could've been sadder. But she smiled at the camera as if she knew a secret. As if my dad and she were sharing a private joke. **

Sadie and Carter smiled at each other. Their parents were, in fact, doing that. It was still a little weird to think about.

**Something tugged at the back of my mind. That stocky man in the trench coat who'd been arguing with Dad across the street—he'd said something about the Per Ankh. Had he meant ankh as in the symbol for life, and if so, what was a per? I supposed he didn't mean pear as in the fruit. I had an eerie feeling that if I saw the words Per Ankh written in hieroglyphics, I would know what they meant. **

**I put down the picture of Mum. I picked up a pencil and turned over one of my old homework papers. I wondered what would happen if I tried to draw the words Per Ankh. Would the right design just occur to me? As I touched pencil to paper, my bedroom door opened. **

"**Miss Kane?" I whirled and dropped the pencil. A police inspector stood frowning in my doorway. "What are you doing?"**

"**Maths," I said. My ceiling was quite low, so the inspector had to stoop to come in. He wore a lint-colored suit that matched his gray hair and his ashen face.**

"**Now then, Sadie. I'm Chief Inspector Williams. Let's have a chat, shall we? Sit down." I didn't sit, and neither did he, which must've annoyed him. It's hard to look in charge when you're hunched over like Quasimodo. **

"Geez, Sadie, where do you get all this stuff?" Carter shook his head while the others laughed.

"**Tell me everything, please," he said, "from the time your father came round to get you." **

"**I already told the police at the museum." **

"**Again, if you don't mind." **

**So I told him everything. Why not? His left eyebrow crept higher and higher as I told him the strange bits like the glowing letters and serpent staff. **

"**Well, Sadie," Inspector Williams said. "You've got quite an imagination." **

"Of course." Leo groaned. "Does anyone actually believe you?"

"Yeah," Carter said. "But not until later."

"**I'm not lying, Inspector. And I think your eyebrow is trying to escape." He tried to look at his own eyebrows, then scowled. **

"Sure, go ahead Sade, annoy the guy who wants to arrest us." Carter muttered.

"**Now, Sadie, I'm sure this is very hard on you. I understand you want to protect your father's reputation. But he's gone now—" **

"**You mean through the floor in a coffin," I insisted. "He's not dead." Inspector Williams spread his hands. "Sadie, I'm very sorry. But we must find out why he did this act of…well…"**

"**Act of what?" He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Your father destroyed priceless artifacts and apparently killed himself in the process. We'd very much like to know why."**

**I stared at him. "Are you saying my father's a terrorist? Are you mad?" **

"Maybe with Isis," Percy mused.

Sadie shrugged, as if to say, _Sort of._

"**We've made calls to some of your father's associates. I understand his behavior had become erratic since your mother's death. He'd become withdrawn and obsessive in his studies, spending more and more time in Egypt—" **

"**He's a bloody Egyptologist! You should be looking for him, not asking stupid questions!"**

"**Sadie," he said, and I could hear in his voice that he was resisting the urge to strangle me. Strangely, I get this a lot from adults. **

"So strange," Walt teased.

"**There are extremist groups in Egypt that object to Egyptian artifacts being kept in other countries' museums. These people might have approached your father. Perhaps in his state, your father became an easy target for them. If you've heard him mention any names—" **

**I stormed past him to the window. I was so angry I could hardly think. I refused to believe Dad was dead. No, no, no. And a terrorist? Please. Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say "tell the truth," and when you do, they don't believe you. What's the point? **

"We feel you," Jason said with a small smile. "The police never really do anything besides make things more difficult."

**I stared down at the dark street. Suddenly that cold tingly feeling got worse than ever. I focused on the dead tree where I'd met Dad earlier. Standing there now, in the dim light of a streetlamp, looking up at me, was the pudgy bloke in the black trench coat and the round glasses and the fedora—the man Dad had called Amos. **

"How did he get there?" Annabeth wondered. This man was very confusing.

**I suppose I should've felt threatened by an odd man staring up at me in the dark of night. But his expression was full of concern. And he looked so familiar. It was driving me mad that I couldn't remember why. **

"Memory problems." Jason nodded. "Those are very annoying,"

Sadie looked at him weirdly, but didn't say anything.

**Behind me, the inspector cleared his throat. "Sadie, no one blames you for the attack on the museum. We understand you were dragged into this against your will."**

**I turned from the window. "Against my will? I chained the curator in his office."**

**The inspector's eyebrow started to creep up again. "Be that as it may, surely you didn't understand what your father meant to do. Possibly your brother was involved?" **

**I snorted. "Carter? Please." **

"**So you are determined to protect him as well. You consider him a proper brother, do you?" I couldn't believe it. I wanted to smack his face. **

"**What's that supposed to mean? Because he doesn't look like me?" The inspector blinked. **

"Ouch." Leo muttered.

"**I only meant—" **

"**I know what you meant. Of course he's my brother!"**

**Inspector Williams held up his hands apologetically, but I was still seething. As much as Carter annoyed me, I hated it when people assumed we weren't related, or looked at my father askance when he said the three of us were a family—like we'd done something wrong. Stupid Dr. Martin at the museum. Inspector Williams. It happened every time Dad and Carter and I were together. Every bloody time. **

"Sorry again," Percy murmured.

"Dude, it's fine." Carter assured him.

"**I'm sorry, Sadie," the inspector said. "I only want to make sure we separate the innocent from the guilty. It will go much easier for everyone if you cooperate. Any information. Anything your father said. People he might've mentioned." **

"**Amos," I blurted out, just to see his reaction. "He met a man named Amos." **

"This Amos character is kinda suspicious." Frank commented.

"At first, he was. Then he wasn't. Then he was again." Carter told him.

**Inspector Williams sighed. "Sadie, he couldn't have done. Surely you know that. We spoke with Amos not one hour ago, on the phone from his home in New York."**

The demigods tensed. This was coming close to home.

"**He isn't in New York!" I insisted. "He's right—" I glanced out the window and Amos was gone. Bloody typical. "That's not possible," I said. **

"**Exactly," the inspector said. **

"**But he was here!" I exclaimed. "Who is he? One of Dad's colleagues? How did you know to call him?" **

"**Really, Sadie. This acting must stop." **

"_**Acting**_**?" **

**The inspector studied me for a moment, then set his jaw as if he'd made a decision. "We've already had the truth from Carter. I didn't want to upset you, but he told us everything. He understands there's no point protecting your father now. You might as well help us, and there will be no charges against you." **

"**You shouldn't lie to children!" I yelled, hoping my voice carried all the way downstairs. "Carter would never say a word against Dad, and neither will I!" **

**The inspector didn't even have the decency to look embarrassed. **

**He crossed his arms. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Sadie. I'm afraid it's time we went downstairs…to discuss consequences with your grandparents."**

"That's the end." Hazel said.

"Alright, alright." Percy put his hands up in a 'hold up' gesture. "Can I get a quick run-through?"

"So, my dad and I went to pick up Sadie for Visitation Day," Carter started. "We saw this guy, Amos, who keeps appearing at our grandparents' house. We went to the British Museum, stopping at Cleopatra's Needle, where we learned our mom died. We chained the curator in his office, came back to see our dad with a boomerang and a staff, writing on the Rosetta Stone, which then proceeded to blow up."

"I still can't believe you did that." Annabeth grumbled.

"Then an evil guy comes out of the stone-"

"Whom you said was a god," Piper said.

"Yeah, and he captures our dad, then tries to kill us, but finds he can't. Then he knocks us out, and two people want to kill us, but the French dude says to wait. THe police catch us, take us back to our grandparents' house, and interrogate us. That's it, so far." Carter finishes.

Percy rubs his temples. "This book is giving me a headache,"

"If the book's giving you a headache, try living it." Sadie said.

The demigods just looked at each other.

Percy cleared his throat, "I'll read next."

**(We're just pretending that their dyslexia doesn't exist.)**

**Hope you guys liked. Sorry it took me so long to update.**

**Replies…**

**kiwiwkraz: Thanks! Yeah, I'm rereading it too as I go along. I'll try my best to add some extra commentary, thanks for letting me know!**

**Thundefwolf7226: Here ya go! Thanks for the review.**

**s27lavh0526: Thank you! And I may just use that, it would be pretty great lol. Thanks for reviewing!**

**EmberFlame03: Thanks, I'm glad you like it. Ha, yeah. It was pretty confusing. Thank you for your review!**

**Olympus Angel: Thank you, here it is!**


	5. Chapter 4

**4\. Kidnapped by a Not-So-Stranger **

**I JUST LOVE FAMILY MEETINGS. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you. **

"Sad but true." Sadie muttered.

**Carter slumped on the sofa, cradling Dad's workbag. I wondered why the police had let him keep it. It should have been evidence or something, but the inspector didn't seem to notice it at all. **

"Odd," Annabeth comments.

**Carter looked awful—I mean even worse than usual. Honestly, the boy had never been in a proper school, and he dressed like a junior professor, **

"I do not!" Carter exclaimed.

"I suppose you're a little better now." Sadie relented.

**with his khaki trousers and a button-down shirt and loafers. He's not bad looking, I suppose. He's reasonably tall and fit and his hair isn't hopeless. He's got Dad's eyes, and my mates Liz and Emma have even told me from his picture that he's **_**hot**_**, **

Carter choked. "_What?_"

Sadie sighed. "I know, I don't get it, either."

Carter could only splutter a response.

**which I must take with a grain of salt because (a) he's my brother, and (b) my mates are a bit crazed. When it came to clothes, Carter wouldn't have known hot if it bit him on the bum.**

**[Oh, don't look at me like that, Carter. You know it's true.] **

The demigods chuckled while Carter sighed.

**At any rate, I shouldn't have been too hard on him. He was taking Dad's disappearance even worse than I was. Gran and Gramps sat on either side of him, looking quite nervous. The pot of tea and a plate of biscuits sat on the table, but no one was having any. **

"That's because her biscuits are horrid." Sadie stage-whispered.

**Chief Inspector Williams ordered me into the only free chair. Then he paced in front of the fireplace importantly. Two more police stood by the front door—the woman from earlier and a big bloke who kept eyeing the biscuits. "Mr. and Mrs. Faust," Inspector Williams said, "I'm afraid we have two uncooperative children." **

"Sadie's always uncooperative." Carter muttered. The demigods laughed a little.

**Gran fidgeted with the trim of her dress. It's hard to believe she's related to Mum. Gran is frail and colorless, like a stick person really, while Mum in the photos always looked so happy and full of life. "They're just children," she managed. "Surely you can't blame them." **

"**Pah!" Gramps said. "This is ridiculous, Inspector. They aren't responsible!" **

"We're..._slightly_ responsible." Sadie smirked. "But only a little."

**Gramps is a former rugby player. He has beefy arms, a belly much too big for his shirt, and eyes sunk deep in his face, as if someone had punched them (well, actually Dad had punched them years ago, but that's another story). Gramps is quite scary looking. Usually people got out of his way, but Inspector Williams didn't seem impressed. **

"**Mr. Faust," he said, "what do you imagine the morning headlines will read? 'British Museum attacked. Rosetta Stone destroyed.' Your son-in-law—"**

"**Former son-in-law," Gramps corrected. **

Carter and Sadie winced.

"—**was most likely vaporized in the explosion, or he ran off, in which case—" **

"**He didn't run off!" I shouted.**

"**We need to know where he is," the inspector continued. "And the only witnesses, your grandchildren, refuse to tell me the truth." **

"**We did tell you the truth," Carter said. "Dad isn't dead. He sank through the floor." **

**Inspector Williams glanced at Gramps, as if to say, There, you see? Then he turned to Carter. "Young man, your father has committed a criminal act. He's left you behind to deal with the consequences—" **

"**That's not true!" I snapped, my voice trembling with rage. I couldn't believe Dad would intentionally leave us at the mercy of police, of course. But the idea of him abandoning me—well, as I might have mentioned, that's a bit of a sore point. **

Sadie stared at the floor and Carter put a hand on her shoulder.

"**Dear, please," Gran told me, "the inspector is only doing his job." **

"**Badly!" I said. **

"**Let's all have some tea," Gran suggested. **

"**No!" Carter and I yelled at once, which made me feel bad for Gran, as she practically wilted into the sofa. **

"**We can charge you," the inspector warned, turning on me. "We can and we will—" He froze. Then he blinked several times, as if he'd forgotten what he was doing. **

"What's going on?" Jason looked completely confused.

**Gramps frowned. "Er, Inspector?" **

"**Yes…" Chief Inspector Williams murmured dreamily. He reached in his pocket and took out a little blue booklet—an American passport. He threw it in Carter's lap. "You're being deported," the inspector announced. "You're to leave the country within twenty-four hours. If we need to question you further, you'll be contacted through the FBI." **

"What? But he was about to arrest you!" Piper exclaimed.

"Seriously, what the heck?" Frank added.

**Carter's mouth fell open. He looked at me, and I knew I wasn't imagining how odd this was. The inspector had completely changed direction. He'd been about to arrest us. I was sure of it. And then out of the blue, he was deporting Carter? Even the other police officers looked confused. "Sir?" the policewoman asked. "Are you sure—" **

"**Quiet, Linley. The two of you may go." The cops hesitated until Williams made a shooing motion with his hand. Then they left, closing the door behind them. **

"**Hold on," Carter said. "My father's disappeared, and you want me to leave the country?" **

"**Your father is either dead or a fugitive, son," the inspector said. "Deportation is the kindest option. It's already been arranged." **

"**With whom?" Gramps demanded. "Who authorized this?" **

"**With…" The inspector got that funny blank look again. "With the proper authorities. Believe me, it's better than prison." **

**Carter looked too devastated to speak, but before I could feel sorry for him, Inspector Williams turned to me. "You, too, miss." **

**He might as well have hit me with a sledgehammer. "You're deporting me?" I asked. "I live here!" **

"**You're an American citizen. And under the circumstances, it's best for you to return home." I just stared at him. I couldn't remember any home except this flat. My mates at school, my room, everything I knew was here. "Where am I supposed to go?" **

"**Inspector," Gran said, her voice trembling. "This isn't fair. I can't believe—" **

"**I'll give you some time to say good-bye," the inspector interrupted. Then he frowned as if baffled by his own actions. "I—I must be going." This made no sense, and the inspector seemed to realize it, but he walked to the front door anyway. **

**When he opened it, I almost jumped out of my chair, because the man in black, Amos, was standing there. **

"What is up with this creepy dude?" Leo asked. "He is literally everywhere!"

"You'll see soon." Carter promised.

**He'd lost his trench coat and hat somewhere, but was still wearing the same pinstripe suit and round glasses. His braided hair glittered with gold beads. I thought the inspector would say something, or express surprise, but he didn't even acknowledge Amos. He walked right past him and into the night. Amos came inside and closed the door.**

**Gran and Gramps stood up. "You," Gramps growled. "I should've known. If I was younger, I would beat you to a pulp." **

"**Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Faust," Amos said. He looked at Carter and me as if we were problems to be solved. "It's time we had a talk." **

**Amos made himself right at home. He flopped onto the sofa and poured himself tea. He munched on a biscuit, which was quite dangerous, because Gran's biscuits are horrid. **

A couple laughs around the room.

**I thought Gramps's head would explode. His face went bright red. He came up behind Amos and raised his hand as if he were about to smack him, but Amos kept munching his biscuit. **

"**Please, sit down," he told us. And we all sat. It was the strangest thing—as if we'd been waiting for his order. Even Gramps dropped his hand and moved round the sofa. He sat next to Amos with a disgusted sigh. Amos sipped his tea and regarded me with some displeasure. That wasn't fair, I thought. I didn't look that bad, considering what we'd been through. **

**Then he looked at Carter and grunted. "Terrible timing," he muttered. "But there's no other way. They'll have to come with me." **

"Um, no, that doesn't sound like a good idea." Piper said.

"**Excuse me?" I said. "I'm not going anywhere with some strange man with biscuit on his face!" He did in fact have biscuit crumbs on his face, but he apparently didn't care, as he didn't bother to check. **

"**I'm no stranger, Sadie," he said. "Don't you remember?" It was creepy hearing him talk to me in such a familiar way. I felt I should know him. I looked at Carter, but he seemed just as mystified as I was. **

"That's really weird." Hazel muttered.

"**No, Amos," Gran said, trembling. "You can't take Sadie. We had an agreement." **

"**Julius broke that agreement tonight," Amos said. "You know you can't care for Sadie anymore—not after what's happened. Their only chance is to come with me." **

"**Why should we go anywhere with you?" Carter asked. "You almost got in a fight with Dad!" **

**Amos looked at the workbag in Carter's lap. "I see you kept your father's bag. That's good. You'll need it. As for getting into fights, Julius and I did that quite a lot. If you didn't notice, Carter, I was trying to stop him from doing something rash. If he'd listened to me, we wouldn't be in this situation." **

**I had no idea what he was on about, but Gramps apparently understood. "You and your superstitions!" he said. "I told you we want none of it." **

"We're just missing some key information here," Annabeth mused. "If we knew what it was, this wouldn't be so confusing."

The magicians exchanged looks. They were getting close.

**Amos pointed to the back patio. Through the glass doors, you could see the lights shining on the Thames. It was quite a nice view at night, when you couldn't notice how run-down some of the buildings were. "Superstition, is it?" Amos asked. "And yet you found a place to live on the east bank of the river." **

**Gramps turned even redder. "That was Ruby's idea. Thought it would protect us. But she was wrong about many things, wasn't she? She trusted Julius and you, for one!"**

"How does that protect you?" Frank wondered.

"Again, you'll see soon." Carter said.

**Amos looked unfazed. He smelled interesting—like old-timey spices, copal and amber, like the incense shops in Covent Garden. He finished his tea and looked straight at Gran. "Mrs. Faust, you know what's begun. The police are the least of your worries." **

**Gran swallowed. "You…you changed that inspector's mind. You made him deport Sadie." **

"He changed his _mind_?! How?" Piper exclaimed.

The Kane siblings sighed. "It's a long story, which you're reading now." Sadie said.

"**It was that or see the children arrested," Amos said. **

"**Hang on," I said. "You changed Inspector Williams's mind? How?" **

**Amos shrugged. "It's not permanent. In fact we should get to New York in the next hour or so before Inspector Williams begins to wonder why he let you go." **

**Carter laughed incredulously. "You can't get to New York from London in an hour. Not even the fastest plane—" **

"**No," Amos agreed. "Not a plane." He turned back to Gran as if everything had been settled. "Mrs. Faust, Carter and Sadie have only one safe option. You know that. They'll come to the mansion in Brooklyn. I can protect them there." **

"One _safe _option?" Hazel said.

"Life is not safe. Especially for us." Carter told her.

The other demigods exchanged a glance. Brooklyn. That was just a bridge away from Manhattan.

"**You've got a mansion," Carter said. "In Brooklyn." **

**Amos gave him an amused smile. "The family mansion. You'll be safe there." **

"**But our dad—" **

"**Is beyond your help for now," Amos said sadly. "I'm sorry, Carter. I'll explain later, but Julius would want you to be safe. For that, we must move quickly. I'm afraid I'm all you've got." **

**That was a bit harsh, I thought. Carter glanced at Gran and Gramps. Then he nodded glumly. He knew that they didn't want him around. He'd always reminded them of our dad. And yes, it was a stupid reason not to take in your grandson, but there you are. **

"That's terrible." Piper said sympathetically.

"That it is." Walt agreed.

"**Well, Carter can do what he wants," I said. "But I live here. And I'm not going off with some stranger, am I?" I looked at Gran for support, but she was staring at the lace doilies on the table as if they were suddenly quite interesting. "Gramps, surely…" But he wouldn't meet my eyes either. **

**He turned to Amos. "You can get them out of the country?" **

"**Hang on!" I protested. Amos stood and wiped the crumbs off his jacket. He walked to the patio doors and stared out at the river. **

"**The police will be back soon. Tell them anything you like. They won't find us." **

"Ominous." Jason commented.

"**You're going to kidnap us?" I asked, stunned. I looked at Carter. "Do you believe this?" **

**Carter shouldered the workbag. Then he stood like he was ready to go. Possibly he just wanted to be out of Gran and Gramps's flat.**

Carter nodded.

"**How do you plan to get to New York in an hour?" he asked Amos. "You said, not a plane." **

"**No," Amos agreed. He put his finger to the window and traced something in the condensation—another bloody hieroglyph. **

"**A boat," I said—then realized I'd translated aloud, which I wasn't supposed to be able to do. Amos peered at me over the top of his round glasses. "How did you—" **

"**I mean that last bit looks like a boat," I blurted out. "But that can't be what you mean. That's ridiculous." **

"That _is _ridiculous." Jason agreed."No boats can travel that fast."

"Uh, _my_ boats can." Leo replied.

"**Look!" Carter cried. I pressed in next to him at the patio doors. Down at the quayside, a boat was docked. But not a regular boat, mind you. It was an Egyptian reed boat, with two torches burning in the front,**

"Egyptian." Annabeth muttered under her breath. It seemed that a lot of things were Egyptian. Could it be-?

**and a big rudder in the back. A figure in a black trench coat and hat—possibly Amos's—stood at the tiller. I'll admit, for once, I was at a loss for words. **

"Definitely for once." Zia smirked. Sadie responded with a glare.

"**We're going in that," Carter said. "To Brooklyn." "We'd better get started," Amos said. **

**I whirled back to my grandmother. "Gran, please!" She brushed a tear from her cheek. "It's for the best, my dear. You should take Muffin." **

"**Ah, yes," Amos said. "We can't forget the cat." He turned towards the stairs. As if on cue, Muffin raced down in a leopard-spotted streak and leaped into my arms. She never does that. **

"Strange." Frank mused.

"**Who are you?" I asked Amos. It was clear I was running out of options, but I at least wanted answers. "We can't just go off with some stranger." **

"**I'm not a stranger." Amos smiled at me. "I'm family."**

**And suddenly I remembered his face smiling down at me, saying, "Happy birthday, Sadie." A memory so distant, I'd almost forgotten. **

"**Uncle Amos?" I asked hazily. **

"The creepy dude's your uncle?" Leo exclaimed. "That sucks."

Sadie shrugged. "It's not so bad."

"**That's right, Sadie," he said. "I'm Julius's brother. Now come along. We have a long way to go."**

"The end." Percy said. "Who's next?"

"I'll go." Piper answered. She took the book.

Sadie grinned. "This is where it gets interesting."

**I am so excited for the next chapter, y'all! Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it. See you next time!**

**Replies…**

**Thunderwolf7226: Thank you, and thanks for the review!**

**EmberFlame03: I know, right? I can't wait until they figure out about the House of Life! Thanks for reviewing!**

**Tots duh: Yeah, pretty much did that. I don't know how they would read if they had it, except for Frank, of course. Thank you for your review!**

**HunterofArtemis9: Thank you! Yeah, one of the reasons I;m writing this is that there are others out there,but they're never finished, and I have full intention to finish this. Thank you, and thanks for reviewing!**

**CDNLightning: I know, the chapter would be butchered. Poor Percy. Thank you for your review**


	6. Chapter 5

**I'm back! Don't get me wrong, the corona virus is terrible, but being quarantined is giving a lot of time to write lol. Anyway, here's the next chapter, hope you like!**

** R**

**5\. We Meet the Monkey **

**IT'S CARTER AGAIN. SORRY. We had to turn off the tape for a while because we were being followed by—well, we'll get to that later. Sadie was telling you how we left London, right? **

**So anyway, we followed Amos down to the weird boat docked at the quayside. I cradled Dad's workbag under my arm. I still couldn't believe he was gone. I felt guilty leaving London without him, but I believed Amos about one thing: right now Dad was beyond our help. I didn't trust Amos, but I figured if I wanted to find out what had happened to Dad, I was going to have to go along with him. He was the only one who seemed to know anything. **

"That's true." Carter muttered.

**Amos stepped aboard the reed boat. Sadie jumped right on, but I hesitated. I'd seen boats like this on the Nile before, and they never seemed very sturdy. It was basically woven together from coils of plant fiber—like a giant floating rug. I figured the torches at the front couldn't be a good idea, because if we didn't sink, we'd burn. **

**At the back, the tiller was manned by a little guy wearing Amos's black trench coat and hat. The hat was shoved down on his head so I couldn't see his face. His hands and feet were lost in the folds of the coat. "How does this thing move?" I asked Amos. "You've got no sail." **

"**Trust me." Amos offered me a hand. The night was cold, but when I stepped on board I suddenly felt warmer, as if the torchlight were casting a protective glow over us. In the middle of the boat was a hut made from woven mats. **

**From Sadie's arms, Muffin sniffed at it and growled. "Take a seat inside," Amos suggested. "The trip might be a little rough." **

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hazel frowned.

"**I'll stand, thanks." Sadie nodded at the little guy in back. "Who's your driver?" **

**Amos acted as if he hadn't heard the question. "Hang on, everyone!" He nodded to the steersman, and the boat lurched forward. **

**The feeling was hard to describe. You know that tingle in the pit of your stomach when you're on a roller coaster and it goes into free fall? It was kind of like that, except we weren't falling, and the feeling didn't go away. The boat moved with astounding speed. The lights of the city blurred, then were swallowed in a thick fog. Strange sounds echoed in the dark: slithering and hissing, distant screams, voices whispering in languages I didn't understand. The tingling turned to nausea. The sounds got louder, until I was about to scream myself. Then suddenly the boat slowed. The noises stopped, and the fog dissipated. **

**City lights came back, brighter than before. Above us loomed a bridge, much taller than any bridge in London. My stomach did a slow roll. To the left, I saw a familiar skyline—the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building. "Impossible," I said. "That's New York."**

"What?" Annabeth exclaimed. "How is that even possible?"

"The Duat." Carter answered, though none of them knew what that meant.

**Sadie looked as green as I felt. She was still cradling Muffin, whose eyes were closed. The cat seemed to be purring. "It can't be," Sadie said. "We only traveled a few minutes." **

**And yet here we were, sailing up the East River, right under the Williamsburg Bridge. **

Percy winced.

**We glided to a stop next to a small dock on the Brooklyn side of the river. In front of us was an industrial yard filled with piles of scrap metal and old construction equipment. In the center of it all, right at the water's edge, rose a huge factory warehouse heavily painted with graffiti, the windows boarded up. **

"**That is not a mansion," Sadie said. Her powers of perception are really amazing. **

"Uh, are _you_ being sarcastic? Really?" Sadie said, smirking.

Carter, along with everyone else, just chuckled and shook his head.

"**Look again." Amos pointed to the top of the building. **

"**How…how did you…" My voice failed me. I wasn't sure why I hadn't seen it before, but now it was obvious: a five-story mansion perched on the roof of the warehouse, like another layer of a cake. "You couldn't build a mansion up there!" **

"How in the world did we never see that?" Jason furrowed his eyebrows.

"**Long story," Amos said. "But we needed a private location." **

"**And is this the east shore?" Sadie asked. "You said something about that in London—my grandparents living on the east shore." **

**Amos smiled. "Yes. Very good, Sadie. In ancient times, the east bank of the Nile was always the side of the living, the side where the sun rises. The dead were buried west of the river. It was considered bad luck, even dangerous, to live there. The tradition is still strong among…our people." **

"Our people?" Annabeth asked.

"**Our people?" I asked, but Sadie muscled in with another question. **

"**So you can't live in Manhattan?" she asked. **

The demigods tensed. They weren't sure if they were supposed to reveal themselves or not, but now did not seem like the best time.

**Amos's brow furrowed as he looked across at the Empire State Building. "Manhattan has other problems. Other gods. It's best we stay separate." **

The tension was so thick that you could cut through it with a knife. The demigods didn't really know what to say. So, this man knew about the Greek Gods. But that's not something you just randomly burst out.

"Do you guys have your own gods or something?" Percy asked, trying to east the tension.

The Kanes shrugged.

"**Other what?" Sadie demanded. **

"**Nothing." Amos walked past us to the steersman. He plucked off the man's hat and **

**coat—and there was no one underneath. The steersman simply wasn't there. **

"What the heck?" Frank frowned.

**Amos put on his fedora, folded his coat over his arm, then waved toward a metal staircase that wound all the way up the side of the warehouse to the mansion on the roof. "All ashore," he said. "And welcome to the Twenty-first Nome." **

"**Gnome?" I asked, as we followed him up the stairs. "Like those little runty guys?"**

"Honesty, Carter," Sadie admonished sarcastically. "How did that thought even enter your head?"

Carter sighed. "I'm glad I still have the option to deny that we're siblings."

"**Heavens, no," Amos said. "I hate gnomes. They smell horrible." **

"**But you said—" **

"**Nome, n-o-m-e. As in a district, a region. The term is from ancient times, when Egypt was divided into forty-two provinces. Today, the system is a little different. We've gone global. The world is divided into three hundred and sixty nomes. Egypt, of course, is the First. Greater New York is the Twenty-first." **

"_Greater _New York?" Percy protested.

**Sadie glanced at me and twirled her finger around her temple. "No, Sadie," Amos said without looking back. "I'm not crazy. There's much you need to learn." **

"Like I said, creepy." Leo declared.

**We reached the top of the stairs. Looking up at the mansion, it was hard to understand what I was seeing. The house was at least fifty feet tall, built of enormous limestone blocks and steel-framed windows. There were hieroglyphs engraved around the windows, and the walls were lit up so the place looked like a cross between a modern museum and an ancient temple. **

**But the weirdest thing was that if I glanced away, the whole building seemed to disappear. I tried it several times just to be sure. If I looked for the mansion from the corner of my eye, it wasn't there. I had to force my eyes to refocus on it, and even that took a lot of willpower. Amos stopped before the entrance, which was the size of a garage door—a dark heavy square of timber with no visible handle or lock. "Carter, after you." **

"**Um, how do I—" **

"**How do you think?" Great, another mystery. I was about to suggest we ram Amos's head against it and see if that worked. **

"I honestly would have done that by now." Sadie agreed.

**Then I looked at the door again, and I had the strangest feeling. I stretched out my arm. Slowly, without touching the door, I raised my hand and the door followed my movement—sliding upward until it disappeared into the ceiling. Sadie looked stunned. "How…" **

"**I don't know," I admitted, a little embarrassed. "Motion sensor, maybe?" **

"**Interesting." Amos sounded a little troubled. "Not the way I would've done it, but very good. Remarkably good." **

"I will be very happy when this is all explained." Jason muttered.

"**Thanks, I think." Sadie tried to go inside first, but as soon as she stepped on the threshold, Muffin wailed and almost clawed her way out of Sadie's arms. Sadie stumbled backward. "What was that about, cat?" **

"**Oh, of course," Amos said. "My apologies." He put his hand on the cat's head and said, very formally, "You may enter."**

"**The cat needs permission?" I asked.**

Hazel threw her hands up into the air. "I'm done trying to figure this out."

"**Special circumstances," Amos said, which wasn't much of an explanation, but he walked inside without saying another word. We followed, and this time Muffin stayed quiet. **

"**Oh my god…" Sadie's jaw dropped. She craned her neck to look at the ceiling, and I thought the gum might fall out of her mouth. **

"**Yes," Amos said. "This is the Great Room." **

**I could see why he called it that. The cedar-beamed ceiling was four stories high, held up by carved stone pillars engraved with hieroglyphs. A weird assortment of musical instruments and Ancient Egyptian weapons decorated the walls. Three levels of balconies ringed the room, with rows of doors all looking out on the main area. The fireplace was big enough to park a car in, with a plasma-screen TV above the mantel and massive leather sofas on either side. On the floor was a snakeskin rug, except it was forty feet long and fifteen feet wide—bigger than any snake. Outside, through glass walls, I could see the terrace that wrapped around the house. It had a swimming pool, a dining area, and a blazing fire pit. And at the far end of the Great Room was a set of double doors marked with the Eye of Horus, and chained with half a dozen padlocks. I wondered what could possibly be behind them. **

"You know what would be very weird if it was behind those doors?" Sadie asked, then whispered dramatically, "_A library_."

Percy snorted. "Who would need to protect a _library _that much?"

Annabeth looked ready to either give another lecture or murder someone. She wasn't sure which.

**But the real showstopper was the statue in the center of the Great Room. It was thirty feet tall, made of black marble. I could tell it was of an Egyptian god because the figure had a human body and an animal's head—like a stork or a crane, with a long neck and a really long beak. The god was dressed ancient-style in a kilt, sash, and neck collar. He held a scribe's stylus in one hand, and an open scroll in the other, as if he had just written the hieroglyphs inscribed there: an ankh—the Egyptian looped cross—with a rectangle traced around its top. "That's it!" Sadie exclaimed. "Per Ankh." **

"What is Per Ankh?" Frank looked exasperated.

**I stared at her in disbelief. "All right, how can you read that?" **

"**I don't know," she said. "But it's obvious, isn't it? The top one is shaped like the floor plan of a house." **

"**How did you get that? It's just a box." The thing was, she was right. I recognized the symbol, and it was supposed to be a simplified picture of a house with a doorway, but that wouldn't be obvious to most people, especially people named Sadie. Yet she looked absolutely positive. **

"**It's a house," she insisted. "And the bottom picture is the ankh, the symbol for life. Per Ankh—the House of Life." **

The magicians gave each other small smiles.

"So that's what you're called? The House of Life?" Annabeth asked.

"Yes." Walt confirmed.

"**Very good, Sadie." Amos looked impressed. "And this is a statue of the only god still allowed in the House of Life—at least, normally. Do you recognize him, Carter?" **

**Just then it clicked: the bird was an ibis, an Egyptian river bird. "Thoth," I said. "The god of knowledge. He invented writing." **

"**Indeed," Amos said. **

"**Why the animal heads?" Sadie asked. "All those Egyptian gods have animal heads. They look so silly." **

"**They don't normally appear that way," Amos said. "Not in real life." **

"Okay, so are we going with Egyptain gods now?" Percy wondered. When no one answered, he muttered, "Alright, I guess we are."

"**Real life?" I asked. "Come on. You sound like you've met them in person." **

**Amos's expression didn't reassure me. He looked as if he were remembering something unpleasant. "The gods could appear in many forms—usually fully human or fully animal, but occasionally as a hybrid form like this. They are primal forces, you understand, a sort of bridge between humanity and nature. They are depicted with animal heads to show that they exist in two different worlds at once. Do you understand?" **

"**Not even a little," Sadie said.**

"**Mmm." Amos didn't sound surprised. "Yes, we have much training to do. At any rate, the god before you, Thoth, founded the House of Life, for which this mansion is the regional headquarters. Or at least…it used to be. I'm the only member left in the Twenty-first Nome. Or I was, until you two came along." **

"Wait, there's only three of...whatever you are...in Brooklyn?" Jason asked.

"No." Sadie responded brightly.

"Will we _ever _get a straight answer?" Jason muttered.

"**Hang on." I had so many questions I could hardly think where to start. "What is the House of Life? Why is Thoth the only god allowed here, and why are you—" **

"**Carter, I understand how you feel." Amos smiled sympathetically. "But these things are better discussed in daylight. You need to get some sleep, and I don't want you to have nightmares." **

"**You think I can sleep?" **

"**Mrow." Muffin stretched in Sadie's arms and let loose a huge yawn. **

**Amos clapped his hands. "Khufu!" I thought he'd sneezed, because Khufu is a weird name, but then a little dude about three feet tall with gold fur and a purple shirt came clambering down the stairs. It took me a second to realize it was a baboon wearing an L.A. Lakers jersey. **

"You guys have a baboon?" Percy whined. "Lucky!"

**The baboon did a flip and landed in front of us. He showed off his fangs and made a sound that was half roar, half belch. His breath smelled like nacho-flavored Doritos. All I could think to say was, "The Lakers are my home team!" **

**The baboon slapped his head with both hands and belched again. "Oh, Khufu likes you," Amos said. "You'll get along famously." **

"**Right." Sadie looked dazed. "You've got a monkey butler. Why not?" Muffin purred in Sadie's arms as if the baboon didn't bother her at all. **

"Why would a baboon butler bother anyone? It's cool!" Percy said.

Annabeth shook her head with a '_You are so stupid but I still love you' _look on her face.

"**Agh!" Khufu grunted at me. Amos chuckled. "He wants to go one-on-one with you, Carter. To, ah, see your game." **

**I shifted from foot to foot. "Um, yeah. Sure. Maybe tomorrow. But how can you understand—" **

"**Carter, I'm afraid you'll have a lot to get used to," Amos said. "But if you're going to survive and save your father, you have to get some rest." **

"**Sorry," Sadie said, "did you say 'survive and save our father'? Could you expand on that?" **

"That would be nice." Frank agreed.

"**Tomorrow," Amos said. "We'll begin your orientation in the morning. Khufu, show them to their rooms, please." **

"**Agh-uhh!" the baboon grunted. He turned and waddled up the stairs. Unfortunately, the Lakers jersey didn't completely cover his multicolored rear. We were about to follow when Amos said, "Carter, the workbag, please. It's best if I lock it in the library." **

**I hesitated. I'd almost forgotten the bag on my shoulder, but it was all I had left of my father. I didn't even have our luggage because it was still locked up at the British Museum. Honestly, I'd been surprised that the police hadn't taken the workbag too, but none of them seemed to notice it. **

"**You'll get it back," Amos promised. "When the time is right." He asked nicely enough, but something in his eyes told me that I really didn't have a choice. I handed over the bag. Amos took it gingerly, as if it were full of explosives. **

"What if it was?" Sadie whispered. Carter elbowed her in the ribs and she helped, "Ouch! Carter!"

"**See you in the morning." He turned and strode toward the chained-up doors. They unlatched themselves and opened just enough for Amos to slip through without showing us anything on the other side. Then the chains locked again behind him. **

"It's a library?!" Percy exclaimed. "Seriously?"

"Very seriously." Sadie grinned.

**I looked at Sadie, unsure what to do. Staying by ourselves in the Great Room with the creepy statue of Thoth didn't seem like much fun, so we followed Khufu up the stairs. **

**Sadie and I got adjoining rooms on the third floor, and I've got to admit, they were way cooler than any place I'd ever stayed before. I had my own kitchenette, fully stocked with my favorite snacks: ginger ale—[No, Sadie. It's not an old person's soda! Be quiet!]**

The demigods laughed.

—**Twix, and Skittles. It seemed impossible. How did Amos know what I liked? The TV, computer, and stereo system were totally high-tech. The bathroom was stocked with my regular brand of toothpaste, deodorant, everything. The king-size bed was awesome, too, though the pillow was a little strange. Instead of a cloth pillow, it was an ivory headrest like I'd seen in Egyptian tombs. It was decorated with lions and (of course) more hieroglyphs. The room even had a deck that looked out on New York Harbor, with views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty in the distance, but the sliding glass doors were locked shut somehow. That was my first indication that something was wrong. I turned to look for Khufu, but he was gone. The door to my room was shut. I tried to open it, but it was locked.**

"Uh-oh," Hazel muttered. "That's not good."

**A muffled voice came from the next room. "Carter?" **

"**Sadie." I tried the door to her adjoining room, but it was locked too. **

"**We're prisoners," she said. "Do you think Amos…I mean, can we trust him?" After all I'd seen today, I didn't trust anything, but I could hear the fear in Sadie's voice. It triggered an unfamiliar feeling in me, like I needed to reassure her. The idea seemed ridiculous. Sadie had always seemed so much braver than me—doing what she wanted, never caring about the consequences. I was the one who got scared. But right now, I felt like I needed to play a role I hadn't played in a long, long time: big brother. **

"Aw, Carter, you're so adorable." Sadie patted Carter's head like he was a dog that just did a trick.

Carter swatted her hand away, annoyed.

"**It'll be okay." I tried to sound confident. "Look, if Amos wanted to hurt us, he could've done it by now. Try to get some sleep." **

"**Carter?" **

"**Yeah?" **

"**It was magic, wasn't it? What happened to Dad at the museum. Amos's boat. This house. All of it's magic." **

"Hecate?" Piper wondered aloud.

"What?" Zia asked.

"**I think so." **

**I could hear her sigh. "Good. At least I'm not going mad." **

"**Don't let the bedbugs bite," I called. And I realized I hadn't said that to Sadie since we had lived together in Los Angeles, when Mom was still alive. **

"**I miss Dad," she said. "I hardly ever saw him, I know, but…I miss him." My eyes got a little teary, but I took a deep breath. I was not going to go all weak. Sadie needed me. Dad needed us. **

"**We'll find him," I told her. "Pleasant dreams." I listened, but the only thing I heard was Muffin meowing and scampering around, exploring her new space. At least she didn't seem unhappy. **

**I got ready for bed and crawled in. The covers were comfortable and warm, but the pillow was just too weird. It gave me neck cramps, so I put it on the floor and went to sleep without it. My first big mistake.**

"The end." Piper said. "Who's next?"

"I can." Frank answered.

"So, Egyptian gods?" Annabeth questioned.

The magicians exchanged looks. "You'll have all your answers in the next chapter." Carter promised.

**Who's ready for the next chapter? Me! Sorry. Anywho, I will say that I may be updating this story more frequently because there are a lot of chapters. But don't worry, next update for Love Through Pain is comin' up!**

**Replies…**

**kiwikraz: Absolutely. Team Leo all the way! Yeah, Sadie's actually a nice person if you get to know her. Poor Gran. I mean, Amos is kinda suspicious. A random dude turns up at your house and is like, 'I'm taking you to New York whether you like it or not'. Don't worry about it. Thanks for the review!**

**smasher5: I'm thinking about it, though I'm not sure yet. Thanks for your review!**

**Guest: Thank you! Here's the next chapter for ya. Thanks for reviewing!**


	7. Chapter 6

**Sorry, sorry, sorry! *dodges flying knives* I know I haven't updated this story in forever, but here's the next chapter! And I'll post again sometime this week, promise! **

**Anyway, very sorry for taking so long. This chapter's gonna be interesting. Hope you like! **

**Disclaimer: I don't own this book or any of these characters.**

**6\. Breakfast with a Crocodile **

**HOW TO DESCRIBE IT? Not a nightmare. It was much more real and frightening. As I slept, I felt myself go weightless. I drifted up, turned, and saw my own sleeping form below. **_**I'm dying**_**, I thought. **

Sadie rolled her eyes.

**But that wasn't it, either. I wasn't a ghost. I had a new shimmering golden form with wings instead of arms. I was some kind of bird. [No, Sadie, not a chicken. Will you let me tell the story, please?] **

The room burst into laughter, excluding Carter.

**I knew I wasn't dreaming, because I don't dream in color. I certainly don't dream in all five senses. The room smelled faintly of jasmine. I could hear the carbonation bubbles pinging in the can of ginger ale I'd opened on my nightstand. I could feel a cold wind ruffling through my feathers, and I realized the windows were open. I didn't want to leave, but a strong current pulled me out of the room like a leaf in a storm. **

**The lights of the mansion faded below me. The skyline of New York blurred and disappeared. I shot through the mist and darkness, strange voices whispering all around me. My stomach tingled as it had earlier that night on Amos's barge.**

"What- How do you guys travel that way?" Jason asked.

Carter glanced at Sadie, then shrugged. "I have no idea. We just do."

**Then the mist cleared, and I was in a different place. I floated above a barren mountain. Far below, a grid of city lights stretched across the valley floor. Definitely not New York. It was nighttime, but I could tell I was in the desert. The wind was so dry, the skin on my face was like paper. And I know that doesn't make sense, but my face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn't transformed into a bird. **

**[Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy?] **

Percy chuckled. "Me and Sadie had the same idea."

"We are never going to forget this, you know." Sadie added helpfully. Carter groaned.

**Below me on a ridge stood two figures. They didn't seem to notice me, and I realized I wasn't glowing anymore. In fact I was pretty much invisible, floating in the darkness. I couldn't make out the two figures clearly, except to recognize that they weren't human. **

"That doesn't sound good," Leo muttered.

Sadie rolled her eyes. "No duh."

**Staring harder, I could see that one was short, squat, and hairless, with slimy skin that glistened in the starlight—like an amphibian standing on its hind legs. The other was tall and scarecrow skinny, with rooster claws instead of feet. I couldn't see his face very well, but it looked red and moist and…well, let's just say I was glad I couldn't see it better. **

"That's disgusting," Hazel wrinkled her nose.

"**Where is he?" the toadie-looking one croaked nervously. **

"**Hasn't taken a permanent host yet," the rooster-footed guy chided. "He can only appear for a short time." **

"**You're sure this is the place?" **

"**Yes, fool! He'll be here as soon—" **

**A fiery form appeared on the ridge. The two creatures fell to the ground, groveling in the dirt, and I prayed like crazy that I really was invisible. **

"Is it the fiery guy?" Frank asked.

"Unfortunately," Carter muttered.

"**My lord!" the toad said. **

**Even in the dark, the newcomer was hard to see—just the silhouette of a man outlined in flames. **

"**What do they call this place?" the man asked. And as soon as he spoke, I knew for sure he was the guy who'd attacked my dad at the British Museum. All the fear I'd felt at the museum came rushing back, paralyzing me. I remembered trying to pick up that stupid rock to throw, but I hadn't been able to do even that. I'd completely failed my dad. **

Sadie patted Carter consolingly on the arm. "I hated myself, too. It goes around."

"**My lord," Rooster Foot said. "The mountain is called Camelback. The city is called Phoenix." **

**The fiery man laughed—a booming sound like thunder. "Phoenix. How appropriate! And the desert so much like home. All it needs now is to be scoured of life. **

The room filled with tension.

**The desert should be a sterile place, don't you think?" **

"**Oh yes, my lord," the toadie agreed. "But what of the other four?" "One is already entombed," the fiery man said. "The second is weak. She will be easily manipulated. That leaves only two. And they will be dealt with soon enough." **

"**Er…how?" the toadie asked. **

**The fiery man glowed brighter. "You are an inquisitive little tadpole, aren't you?" He pointed at the toad and the poor creature's skin began to steam. **

"**No!" the toadie begged. "No-o-o-o!" **

**I could hardly watch. I don't want to describe it. But if you've heard what happens when cruel kids pour salt on snails, you'll have a pretty good idea of what happened to the toadie. Soon there was nothing left. **

The demigods looked repulsed.

"That's…..nice." Percy said. Sadie snorted.

**Rooster Foot took a nervous step back. I couldn't blame him. **

"**We will build my temple here," the fiery man said, as if nothing had happened. "This mountain shall serve as my place of worship. When it is complete, I will summon the greatest storm ever known. I will cleanse everything. Everything." **

"**Yes, my lord," Rooster Foot agreed quickly. "And, ah, if I may suggest, my lord, to increase your power…" The creature bowed and scraped and moved forward, as if he wanted to whisper in the fiery man's ear. Just when I thought Rooster Foot was going to become fried chicken for sure, he said something to the fiery dude that I couldn't make out, and the fiery dude burned brighter. **

"**Excellent! If you can do this, you will be rewarded. If not…" **

"**I understand, my lord." **

"**Go then," the fiery man said. "Unleash our forces. Start with the longnecks. That should soften them up. Collect the younglings and bring them to me.**

"Well, that doesn't sound good." Jason remarked.

**I want them alive, before they have time to learn their powers. Do not fail me." **

"**No, lord." **

"**Phoenix," the fiery man mused. "I like that very much." He swept his hand across the horizon, as if he were imagining the city in flames. "Soon I will rise from your ashes. It will be a lovely birthday present." **

**I woke with my heart pounding, back in my own body. I felt hot, as if the fiery guy were starting to burn me. Then I realized that there was a cat on my chest. **

"You're lucky she wasn't on your head." Sadie said. The demigods laughed, and Carter grinned.

**Muffin stared at me, her eyes half closed. "Mrow." **

"**How did you get in?" I muttered. I sat up, and for a second I wasn't sure where I was. Some hotel in another city? I almost called for my dad…and then I remembered. Yesterday. The museum. The sarcophagus. It all crashed down on me so hard I could barely breathe. Stop, I told myself. You don't have time for grief. And this is going to sound weird, but the voice in my head almost sounded like a different person—older, stronger. Either that was a good sign, or I was going crazy. **

"You're probably going crazy," Sadie smirked.

Carter returned her smirk and shrugged. "Maybe."

_**Remember what you saw**_**, the voice said. **_**He's after you. You have to be ready.**_

**I shivered. I wanted to believe I'd just had a bad dream, but I knew better. I'd been through too much in the last day to doubt what I'd seen. Somehow, I'd actually left my body while I slept. I'd been to Phoenix—thousands of miles away. The fiery dude was there. I hadn't understood much of what he'd said, but he'd talked about sending his forces to capture the younglings. Gee, wonder who that could be? **

"Were you just…..sarcastic?" Sadie gasped. "I didn't know you could do that!"

**Muffin jumped off the bed and sniffed at the ivory headrest, looking up at me as if she were trying to tell me something. "You can have it," I told her. "It's uncomfortable." **

**She butted her head against it and stared at me accusingly. "Mrow." **

"**Whatever, cat." I got up and showered. When I tried to get dressed, I found that my old clothes had disappeared in the night. Everything in the closet was my size, but way different than what I was used to—baggy drawstring pants and loose shirts, all plain white linen, and robes for cold weather, kind of what the **_**fellahin**_**, the peasants in Egypt, wear. It wasn't exactly my style.**

"You don't have style." Sadie scoffed.

**Sadie likes to tell me that I don't have a style. **

"Don't repeat yourself." Carter teased. Sadie glared at him.

**She complains that I dress like I'm an old man—button-down shirt, slacks, dress shoes. Okay, maybe. But here's the thing. My dad had always drilled into my head that I had to dress my best. I remember the first time he explained it to me. I was ten. We were on our way to the airport in Athens, and it was like 112 degrees outside, and I was complaining that I wanted to wear shorts and a T-shirt. Why couldn't I be comfortable? We weren't going anywhere important that day—just traveling. My dad put his hand on my shoulder. "Carter, you're getting older. You're an African American man. People will judge you more harshly, and so you must always look impeccable." **

"**That isn't fair!" I insisted. **

"**Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same," Dad said. "Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself. Do you understand?" **

**I told him I didn't. But still I did what he asked—like caring about Egypt, and basketball, and music. Like traveling with only one suitcase. I dressed the way Dad wanted me to, because Dad was usually right. In fact I'd never known him to be wrong…until the night at the British Museum. **

**Anyway, I put on the linen clothes from the closet. The slipper shoes were comfortable, though I doubted they'd be much good to run in. **

"The fact that you're just expecting to run that day is kinda sad." Piper said. Carter shrugged.

**The door to Sadie's room was open, but she wasn't there. Thankfully my bedroom door wasn't locked anymore. **

**Muffin joined me and we walked downstairs, passing a lot of unoccupied bedrooms on the way. The mansion could've easily slept a hundred people, but instead it felt empty and sad. **

**Down in the Great Room, Khufu the baboon sat on the sofa with a basketball between his legs and a chunk of strange-looking meat in his hands. It was covered in pink feathers. **

"...Interesting?" Hazel tried, wrinkling her nose.

**ESPN was on the television, and Khufu was watching highlights from the games the night before. **

"**Hey," I said, though I felt a little weird talking to him. "Lakers win?" **

**Khufu looked at me and patted his basketball like he wanted a game. "Agh, agh." He had a pink feather hanging from his chin, and the sight made my stomach do a slow roll. **

"Khufu has the strangest taste." Walt muttered. The magicians laughed.

"**Um, yeah," I said. "We'll play later, okay?" **

**I could see Sadie and Amos out on the terrace, eating breakfast by the pool. It should've been freezing out there, but the fire pit was blazing, and neither Amos nor Sadie looked cold. I headed their way, then hesitated in front of the statue of Thoth. In the daylight, the bird-headed god didn't look quite so scary. Still, I could swear those beady eyes were watching me expectantly. What had the fiery guy said last night? Something about catching us before we learned our powers. It sounded ridiculous, but for a moment I felt a surge of strength—like the night before when I'd opened the front door just by raising my hand. I felt like I could lift anything, even this thirty-foot-tall statue if I wanted to. **

Sadie rolled her eyes, but said nothing. She understood where her brother was coming from, but it make the idea sound less stupid.

**In a kind of trance, I stepped forward. Muffin meowed impatiently and butted my foot. The feeling dissolved. "You're right," I told the cat. "Stupid idea." **

**Besides, I could smell breakfast now—French toast, bacon, hot chocolate—and I couldn't blame Muffin for being in a hurry. I followed her out to the terrace. **

"**Ah, Carter," Amos said. "Merry Christmas, my boy. Join us." **

"**About time," Sadie grumbled. "I've been up for ages." **

**But she held my eyes for a moment, like she was thinking the same thing I was: Christmas. We hadn't spent a Christmas morning together since Mom died. I wondered if Sadie remembered how we used to make god's-eye decorations out of yarn and Popsicle sticks. **

"Yeah," Sadie said softly. "I do, a little."

Carter gave her a sad smile.

**Amos poured himself a cup of coffee. His clothes were similar to those he'd worn the day before, and I had to admit the guy had style. His tailored suit was made of blue wool, he wore a matching fedora, and his hair was freshly braided with dark blue lapis lazuli, one of the stones the Egyptians often used for jewelry. Even his glasses matched. The round lenses were tinted blue. A tenor sax rested on a stand near the fire pit, and I could totally picture him playing out here, serenading the East River. **

The magicians laughed at that. "Weirdly enough, I can see that," Zia chuckled.

**As for Sadie, she was dressed in a white linen pajama outfit like me, but somehow she'd managed to keep her combat boots. She'd probably slept with them on. She looked pretty comical with the red-streaked hair and the outfit, but since I wasn't dressed any better, I could hardly make fun of her. **

"**Um…Amos?" I asked. "You didn't have any pet birds, did you? Khufu's eating something with pink feathers." **

"**Mmm." Amos sipped his coffee. "Sorry if that disturbed you. Khufu's very picky. He only eats foods that end in -o. Doritos, burritos, flamingos." **

Percy frowned. "Flamingos?"

"Don't ask," The Kane siblings said in unison.

**I blinked. "Did you say—" **

"**Carter," Sadie warned. She looked a little queasy, like she'd already had this conversation. "Don't ask." **

"**Okay," I said. "Not asking." **

"**Please, Carter, help yourself." Amos waved toward a buffet table piled high with food. "Then we can get started with the explanations." **

**I didn't see any flamingo on the buffet table, which was fine by me, but there was just about everything else. I snagged some pancakes with butter and syrup, some bacon, and a glass of OJ. Then I noticed movement in the corner of my eye. I glanced at the swimming pool. **

Percy threw his arms up. "I cannot get over how you guys have a _swimming pool _on your _terrace_."

**Something long and pale was gliding just under the surface of the water. I almost dropped my plate. "Is that—" **

"**A crocodile," Amos confirmed. "For good luck. He's albino, but please don't mention that. He's sensitive." **

"**His name is Philip of Macedonia," Sadie informed me. I wasn't sure how Sadie was taking this all so calmly, but I figured if she wasn't freaking out, I shouldn't either. **

"If _I'm _ever freaking out, you most definitely should be." Sadie told Carter. He rolled his eyes.

"**That's a long name," I said. **

"**He's a long crocodile," Sadie said. "Oh, and he likes bacon." To prove her point, she tossed a piece of bacon over her shoulder. Philip lunged out of the water and snapped up the treat. His hide was pure white and his eyes were pink. His mouth was so big, he could've snapped up an entire pig. **

"**He's quite harmless to my friends," Amos assured me. "In the old days, no temple would be complete without a lake full of crocodiles. They are powerful magic creatures." **

"**Right," I said. "So the baboon, the crocodile…any other pets I should know about?" **

**Amos thought for a moment. "Visible ones? No, I think that's it." **

"Visible ones?" Jason looked slightly disturbed. He looked at the Kanes. "Should I ask?"

They shook their heads.

**I took a seat as far from the pool as possible. Muffin circled my legs and purred. I hoped she had enough sense to stay away from magic crocodiles named Philip. **

"**So, Amos," I said between bites of pancake. "Explanations." **

"**Yes," he agreed. "Where to start…" **

"**Our dad," Sadie suggested. "What happened to him?" **

**Amos took a deep breath. "Julius was attempting to summon a god. Unfortunately, it worked." It was kind of hard to take Amos seriously, talking about summoning gods while he spread butter on a bagel. **

"I can see that very well," Walt commented.

"**Any god in particular?" I asked casually. "Or did he just order a generic god?" Sadie kicked me under the table. She was scowling, as if she actually believed what Amos was saying. **

**Amos took a bite of bagel. "There are many Egyptian gods, Carter. **

"So, we _are _going with Egyptian gods?" Annabeth asked.

"We'll explain at the end of the chapter." Carter promised.

**But your dad was after one in particular." He looked at me meaningfully. **

"**Osiris," I remembered. "When Dad was standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, he said, 'Osiris, come.' But Osiris is a legend. He's make-believe." **

Sadie patted Carter on the head condescendingly. "You're quite dense, brother dear."

"**I wish that were true." Amos stared across the East River at the Manhattan skyline, gleaming in the morning sun. "The Ancient Egyptians were not fools, Carter. They built the pyramids. They created the first great nation state. Their civilization lasted thousands of years." **

"**Yeah," I said. "And now they're gone." **

**Amos shook his head. "A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. **

The demigods frowned. "Offensive." Leo shook his head.

Zia frowned. "Why is that offensive?"

Annabeth whacked Leo on the arm. "Never mind."

The magicians looked at each other, but didn't press.

**Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye. The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world's largest Egyptian obelisk. **

"Obelisk?" Annabeth wondered.

"Again, we'll explain later." Sadie said.

**Egypt is still very much alive. And so, unfortunately, are her gods." **

"**Come on," I argued. "I mean…even if I believe there's a real thing called magic. Believing in ancient gods is totally different. You're joking, right?" But as I said it, I thought about the fiery guy in the museum, the way his face had shifted between human and animal. And the statue of Thoth—how its eyes had followed me. **

"**Carter," Amos said, "the Egyptians would not have been stupid enough to believe in imaginary gods. The beings they described in their myths are very, very real. In the old days, the priests of Egypt would call upon these gods to channel their power and perform great feats. That is the origin of what we now call magic. Like many things, magic was first invented by the Egyptians. Each temple had a branch of magicians called the House of Life. Their magicians were famed throughout the ancient world." **

"Magicians." Piper repeated. "Is that what you're called?"

Zia nodded. "Yes. Egyptian magicians."

"**And you're an Egyptian magician." **

**Amos nodded. "So was your father. You saw it for yourself last night." **

**I hesitated. It was hard to deny my dad had done some weird stuff at the museum—some stuff that looked like magic. "But he's an archaeologist," I said stubbornly. **

Sadie groaned. "Carter-"

Carter glared at her. "Yes, I know, I'm a dense idiot."

"**That's his cover story. You'll remember that he specialized in translating ancient spells, which are very difficult to understand unless you work magic yourself. Our family, the Kane family, has been part of the House of Life almost since the beginning. And your mother's family is almost as ancient." **

"**The Fausts?" I tried to imagine Grandma and Grandpa Faust doing magic, but unless watching rugby on TV and burning cookies was magical, I couldn't see it. **

Walt shook his head. "Neither can I."

"**They had not practiced magic for many generations," Amos admitted. "Not until your mother came along. But yes, a very ancient bloodline." **

**Sadie shook her head in disbelief. "So now Mum was magic, too. Are you joking?" **

"**No jokes," Amos promised. "The two of you…you combine the blood of two ancient families, both of which have a long, complicated history with the gods. You are the most powerful Kane children to be born in many centuries." **

**I tried to let that sink in. At the moment, I didn't feel powerful. I felt queasy. "You're telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?" I asked. **

"**Not worshipped," Amos corrected. "By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. **

As one, all of the demigods turned to stare at the magicians.

"You don't worship your gods?" Hazel gasped.

Carter shook his head. "They aren't divine beings. They're just powerful entities, and most of them only have what they want in mind. As Egyptian magicians, it's our job to keep the gods and monsters under control."

"You keep your gods _under control_?" Frank asked. "Do you, like, fight them or something?"

Zia nodded. "We are constantly fighting our gods."

This was strange for the demigods to understand. They worshipped their gods; their gods controlled them. To have gods, but to fight them, was just _weird_.

**They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control—" **

"**Fight gods?" Sadie interrupted. **

"**Constantly," Amos assured her. "But we don't worship them. Thoth taught us that." **

**I looked at Sadie for help. The old guy had to be crazy. But Sadie was looking like she believed every word. "So…" I said. "Why did Dad break the Rosetta Stone?" **

"**Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean to break it," Amos said. "That would've horrified him. In fact, I imagine my brethren in London have repaired the damage by now. The curators will soon check their vaults and discover that the Rosetta Stone miraculously survived the explosion." **

"What- _how_?" Percy exclaimed. "Why are you guys so _confusing_?"

"It's one of our talents," Sadie told him, smirking.

"**But it was blown into a million pieces!" I said. "How could they repair it?" **

**Amos picked up a saucer and threw it onto the stone floor. The saucer shattered instantly. "That was to destroy," Amos said. "I could've done it by magic—**_**ha-di**_—**but it's simpler just to smash it. And now…" Amos held out his hand. "Join. **_**Hi-nehm**_**." **

**A blue hieroglyphic symbol burned in the air above his palm. The pieces of the saucer flew into his hand and reassembled like a puzzle, even the smallest bits of dust gluing themselves into place. Amos put the perfect saucer back on the table. **

"So _that's_ what you did," Percy said wonderingly. Everyone looked at him, not sure what he was talking about.

Then, Carter shrugged. "I'm not very good with divine words. It was an accident."

Sadie frowned at her brother. "Carter, what did you do?"

"What makes you think something happened?" Carter sighed.

"Because whenever you try divine words, it almost always goes wrong." Sadie reasoned.

"_Everything _in our life goes wrong." Carter countered.

"**Some trick," I managed. I tried to sound calm about it, but I was thinking of all the odd things that had happened to my dad and me over the years, like those gunmen in the Cairo hotel who'd ended up hanging by their feet from a chandelier. Was it possible my dad had made that happen with some kind of spell?**

**Amos poured milk in the saucer, and put it on the floor. Muffin came padding over. "At any rate, your father would never intentionally damage a relic. He simply didn't realize how much power the Rosetta Stone contained. You see, as Egypt faded, its magic collected and concentrated into its remaining relics. Most of these, of course, are still in Egypt. But you can find some in almost every major museum. A magician can use these artifacts as focal points to work more powerful spells." **

"That's what an obelisk is," Carter explained. "It's where a sacred shape, normally a building or a stone, is full of concentrated magic. We use them for spells and portals."

Annabeth nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting. How exactly-"

"Let's keep going." Percy intervenes.

"**I don't get it," I said. **

**Amos spread his hands. "I'm sorry, Carter. It takes years of study to understand magic, and I'm trying to explain it to you in a single morning. The important thing is, for the past six years your father has been looking for a way to summon Osiris, and last night he thought he had found the right artifact to do it." **

"**Wait, why did he want Osiris?" **

**Sadie gave me a troubled look. "Carter, Osiris was the lord of the dead. Dad was talking about making things right. He was talking about Mum." **

**Suddenly the morning seemed colder. The fire pit sputtered in the wind coming off the river. "He wanted to bring Mom back from the dead?" I said. "But that's crazy!" **

**Amos hesitated. "It would've been dangerous. Inadvisable. Foolish. But not crazy. Your father is a powerful magician. If, in fact, that is what he was after, he might have accomplished it, using the power of Osiris." **

"Back from the dead?" Jason said quietly. He looked quickly at Hazel. "Uh, sorry."

Hazel didn't answer, but smiled at him to tell him that it was okay.

**I stared at Sadie. "You're actually buying this?" **

"**You saw the magic at the museum. The fiery bloke. Dad summoned something from the stone." **

"**Yeah," I said, thinking of my dream. "But that wasn't Osiris, was it?" **

"**No," Amos said. "Your father got more than he bargained for. He did release the spirit of Osiris. In fact, I think he successfully joined with the god—" **

"**Joined with?" **

**Amos held up his hand. "Another long conversation. For now, let's just say he drew the power of Osiris into himself. But he never got the chance to use it because, according to what Sadie has told me, it appears that Julius released five gods from the Rosetta Stone. Five gods who were all trapped together." **

"Trapped?" Piper asked.

Carter sighed. "It's….there's a lot of complicated stuff. We can explain later. For now, I'm just gonna say that when we fight gods, we trap them in obelisks to keep them out of trouble."

**I glanced at Sadie. "You told him everything?" **

"**He's going to help us, Carter." **

**I wasn't quite ready to trust this guy, even if he was our uncle, but I decided I didn't have much choice. "Okay, yeah," I said. "The fiery guy said something like 'You released all five.' What did he mean?" **

**Amos sipped his coffee. The faraway look on his face reminded me of my dad. "I don't want to scare you." **

"**Too late." **

"Yeah, kinda late for that." Frank said.

"**The gods of Egypt are very dangerous. For the last two thousand years or so, we magicians have spent much of our time binding and banishing them whenever they appear. In fact, our most important law, issued by Chief Lector Iskandar in Roman times, forbids unleashing the gods or using their power. Your father broke that law once before." **

**Sadie's face paled. "Does this have something to do with Mum's death? Cleopatra's Needle in London?" **

Sadie sighed. "Everything started there, unfortunately."

"**It has everything to do with that, Sadie. Your parents…well, they thought they were doing something good. They took a terrible risk, and it cost your mother her life. Your father took the blame. He was exiled, I suppose you would say. Banished. He was forced to move around constantly because the House monitored his activities. They feared he would continue his…research. As indeed he did." **

**I thought about the times Dad would look over his shoulder as he copied some ancient inscriptions, or wake me up at three or four in the morning and insist it was time to change hotels, or warn me not to look in his workbag or copy certain pictures from old temple walls—as if our lives depended on it. **

"You might have gotten the flaming donkey curse if you did," Zia teased Carter.

"The-" Leo started.

Sadie held up a hand. "You _really _don't want to know."

"**Is that why you never came round?" Sadie asked Amos. "Because Dad was banished?" **

"**The House forbade me to see him. I loved Julius. It hurt me to stay away from my brother, and from you children. But I could not see you—until last night, when I simply had no choice but to try to help. Julius has been obsessed with finding Osiris for years. He was consumed with grief because of what happened to your mother. When I learned that Julius was about to break the law again, to try to set things right, I had to stop him. A second offense would've meant a death sentence. Unfortunately, I failed. I should've known he was too stubborn." **

**I looked down at my plate. My food had gotten cold. Muffin leaped onto the table and rubbed against my hand. When I didn't object, she started eating my bacon. "Last night at the museum," I said, "the girl with the knife, the man with the forked beard—they were magicians too? From the House of Life?" **

Percy looked at Zia. "You said that was...sort of you?"

"How can it be sort of you?" Jason asked. Then he paused. "Wait, let me guess, it's complicated."

Sadie looked appreciatively at Jason. "Now you're getting it!"

"**Yes," Amos said. "Keeping an eye on your father. You are fortunate they let you go." **

"**The girl wanted to kill us," I remembered. "But the guy with the beard said, not yet." **

"**They don't kill unless it is absolutely necessary," Amos said. "They will wait to see if you are a threat." **

"**Why would we be a threat?" Sadie demanded. "We're children! The summoning wasn't our idea." **

**Amos pushed away his plate. "There is a reason you two were raised separately." **

"**Because the Fausts took Dad to court," I said matter-of-factly. "And Dad lost." **

"Sometimes, Carter, you are very annoying." Sadie sighed. "Oh, wait, that's all the time!"

Carter glared at her.

"**It was much more than that," Amos said. "The House insisted you two be separated. Your father wanted to keep you both, even though he knew how dangerous it was." **

**Sadie looked like she'd been smacked between the eyes. "He did?" **

"**Of course. But the House intervened and made sure your grandparents got custody of you, Sadie. If you and Carter were raised together, you could become very powerful. Perhaps you have already sensed changes over the past day." **

**I thought about the surges of strength I'd been feeling, and the way Sadie suddenly seemed to know how to read Ancient Egyptian. Then I thought of something even further back. "Your sixth birthday," I told Sadie. **

"**The cake," she said immediately, the memory passing between us like an electric spark.**

Sadie smirked. "This is gonna be fun."

**At Sadie's sixth birthday party, the last one we'd shared as a family, Sadie and I had a huge argument. I don't remember what it was about. I think I wanted to blow out the candles for her. We started yelling. She grabbed my shirt. I pushed her. I remember Dad rushing toward us, trying to intervene, but before he could, Sadie's birthday cake exploded. Icing splattered the walls, our parents, the faces of Sadie's little six-year-old friends. Dad and Mom separated us. They sent me to my room. Later, they said we must've hit the cake by accident as we were fighting, but I knew we hadn't. Something much weirder had made it explode, as if it had responded to our anger. **

There was a beat of silence.

"That's...weird." Hazel said. "It responded to your emotion?"

"Yeah." Sadie said. "When we go on missions together, we have to be careful not to fight or anything, or we'd be blowing up everything we pass."

**I remembered Sadie crying with a chunk of cake on her forehead, an upside-down candle stuck to the ceiling with its wick still burning, and an adult visitor, one of my parents' friends, his glasses speckled with white frosting. I turned to Amos. "That was you. You were at Sadie's party." **

"**Vanilla icing," he recalled. "Very tasty. But it was clear even then that you two would be difficult to raise in the same household." **

"**And so…" I faltered. "What happens to us now?" I didn't want to admit it, but I couldn't stand the thought of being separated from Sadie again. She wasn't much, but she was all I had. **

"You're getting sentimental." Sadie teased. "I thought you never showed emotion."

"I'm pretty sure that's you." Carter shot back.

"**You must be trained properly," Amos said, "whether the House approves or not." **

"**Why wouldn't they approve?" I asked. **

"**I will explain everything, don't worry. But we must start your lessons if we are to stand any chance of finding your father and putting things right. Otherwise the entire world is in danger. If we only knew where—" **

"**Phoenix," I blurted out. Amos stared at me. **

"**What?" **

"**Last night I had…well, not a dream, exactly…" I felt stupid, but I told him what had happened while I slept. **

**Judging from Amos's expression, the news was even worse than I thought. "You're sure he said 'birthday present'?" he asked. **

"**Yeah, but what does that mean?" **

"**And a permanent host," Amos said. "He didn't have one yet?" **

"**Well, that's what the rooster-footed guy said—" **

"**That was a demon," Amos said. "A minion of chaos. And if demons are coming through to the mortal world, **

"So, wait, are demons your monsters, or are there other monsters?" Annabeth asked curiously.

"There's other monsters." Walt answered. "Demons are the servants of Chaos, our main enemy. They live in the Land of the Demons in the Duat. They normally can't get out, unless a god or magician summons them."

Annabeth opened her mouth to ask something else, but Carter cut her off. "Remember, we'll explain everything at the end of this chapter."

**we don't have much time. This is bad, very bad." **

"**If you live in Phoenix," I said. **

"**Carter, our enemy won't stop in Phoenix. If he's grown so powerful so fast… What did he say about the storm, exactly?" **

"**He said: 'I will summon the greatest storm ever known.'" **

**Amos scowled. "The last time he said that, he created the Sahara. A storm that large could destroy North America, generating enough chaos energy to give him an almost invincible form." **

"**What are you talking about? Who is this guy?" **

**Amos waved away the question. "More important right now: why didn't you sleep with the headrest?" **

**I shrugged. "It was uncomfortable." I looked at Sadie for support. "You didn't use it, did you?" **

**Sadie rolled her eyes. "Well, of course I did. It was obviously there for a reason." **

**Sometimes I really hate my sister. [Ow! That's my foot!] **

Everyone snickered, easing the tension. Sadie definitely knew how to do that.

"**Carter," Amos said, "sleep is dangerous. It's a doorway into the Duat." **

"**Lovely," Sadie grumbled. "Another strange word." **

"**Ah…yes, sorry," Amos said. **

"Here's your explanation, Annabeth." Carter said.

"**The Duat is the world of spirits and magic. It exists beneath the waking world like a vast ocean, with many layers and regions. We submerged just under its surface last night to reach New York, because travel through the Duat is much faster. Carter, your consciousness also passed through its shallowest currents as you slept, which is how you witnessed what happened in Phoenix. Fortunately, you survived that experience. But the deeper you go into the Duat, the more horrible things you encounter, and the more difficult it is to return. There are entire realms filled with demons, palaces where the gods exist in their pure forms, so powerful their mere presence would burn a human to ashes. There are prisons that hold beings of unspeakable evil, and some chasms so deep and chaotic that not even the gods dare explore them. Now that your powers are stirring, you must not sleep without protection, or you leave yourself open to attacks from the Duat or…unintended journeys through it. The headrest is enchanted, to keep your consciousness anchored to your body." **

"That sounds kinda terrifying." Piper commented. "And you guys use it all the time?"

Sadie nodded. "We use it to travel, store things, and it's the place we most use to trap gods, demons, and monsters."

"**You mean I actually did…" My mouth tasted like metal. "Could he have killed me?" **

**Amos's expression was grave. "The fact that your soul can travel like that means you are progressing faster than I thought. Faster than should be possible. If the Red Lord had noticed you—" **

"**The Red Lord?" Sadie said. "That's the fiery bloke?" **

**Amos rose. "I must find out more. We can't simply wait for him to find you. And if he releases the storm on his birthday, at the height of his powers—" **

"**You mean you're going to Phoenix?" I could barely get the words out. "Amos, that fiery man defeated Dad like his magic was a joke! Now he's got demons, and he's getting stronger, and—you'll be killed!" **

**Amos gave me a dry smile, like he'd already weighed the dangers and didn't need a reminder. His expression reminded me painfully of Dad's. "Don't count your uncle out so quickly, Carter. I've got some magic of my own. Besides, I must see what is happening for myself if we're to have any chance at saving your father and stopping the Red Lord. I'll be quick and careful. Just stay here. Muffin will guard you." **

"Why does the cat keep coming up?" Piper wondered.

**I blinked. "The cat will guard us? You can't just leave us here! What about our training?" **

"**When I return," Amos promised. "Don't worry, the mansion is protected. Just do not leave. Do not be tricked into opening the door for anyone. And whatever happens, do not go into the library. I absolutely forbid it. I will be back by sunset." Before we could protest, Amos walked calmly to the edge of the terrace and jumped. **

"**No!" Sadie screamed. We ran to the railing and looked over. Below was a hundred-foot drop into the East River. There was no sign of Amos. He'd simply vanished. **

"So...he just teleported out of there?" Leo asked.

Sadie shrugged. "Maybe."

**Philip of Macedonia splashed in his pool. Muffin jumped onto the railing and insisted we pet her. We were alone in a strange mansion with a baboon, a crocodile, and a weird cat. And apparently, the entire world was in danger. **

**I looked at Sadie. "What do we do now?" **

**She crossed her arms. "Well, that's obvious, isn't it? We explore the library."**

"That's it." Frank said. "Explanations now?"

Carter nodded and sighed. "All right. Where to start?"

**Next chapter is going to be the Egyptians telling the Greeks and Romans about themselves! Can't wait, even though I'm the one writing it, lol. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, sorry again for taking so long!**

**P.S. This chapter is a whopping ****six thousand and a half words, y'all. I'm kinda amazed.**

**DaEgyptianRaven: Here's your update! Sorry for taking forever. Thank you!p, and thanks for your review!**

**addieb531: Here's the next chapter! Thank you! Lol, thanks foor your review!**

**Guest #1: I know, me too! I've always been fascinated with Egyptian mythology. Thank you for your review!**

**Guest #2: Yeah, the coronavirus has certainly given me more time….I really don't have an excuse for not updating this for so long. Anyway, yes, I will be continuing this story. Thanks for the review!**

**GolemGuy54341: Thank you! I'm hoping I'll be able to, it would be fun! And then, maybe the Heroes of Olympus after that….yeah, I'm thinking way ahead. Thanks for your review!**

**Thunderwolf7226: Thanks! Yup, I'm fine. Thank you for the review!**

**Tiffany Ardley: Thank you, and thanks for your review!**

**Olympus Angel: Thank you, I'm doing my best lol. Thank you for reviewing!**

**kiwikraz: Yup, not dead. Really? Well, our county reopened shops and stuff last Monday, but we still have to be six feet apart. Sorry there weren't many answers in this chapter, but the next one is completely dedicated to them! Thanks! Anytime, my dude. Thank you for another fantastic review!**

**abusesmasher5: I know, it would be really funny. Thanks for reviewing!**


	8. Explanations

**Drumroll, please! Here is the Explanations chapter! Yay! I hope you like it!**

**Explanations**

_Previously…_

"_That's it." Frank said. "Explanations now?"_

_Carter nodded and sighed. "All right. Where to start?"_

"How about your gods?" Annabeth suggested.

"Okay." Carter started. He took a deep breath. "The Egyptian gods are old. There's hundreds of them. The king of the gods is Ra, god if the sun. There's Horus, the god of war, Isis, the goddess of magic, Set, the god of evil, Nephthys, the goddess of rivers and air, Osiris, the god of death, and Thoth, the god of wisdom. Those are the well-known ones. There's still a lot more, but it would take forever to name them all."

"How do you guys have powers?" Leo wondered. Since they had named both of their parents, they weren't children of the gods.

"Our family is descended from the pharaohs of Egypt." Carter answered. "My dad from Narmer; my mom from Ramses. The royal blood, the Blood of the Pharaohs, is what helps us with our magic. Just from being descended from two powerful pharaohs does give us some magic, but we each have patron gods." He gestured to Sadie. "Isis for Sadie, Horus for me, Ra for Zia, and Anubis, the god of funerals, for Walt. We draw in their power to feed our own magic. Only magicians with the Blood of the Pharaohs can join with a god. If they don't have the blood, the essence and power of the god will burn them to ashes. When magicians have patron gods, or have joined with a god, we call them 'hosts'."

"Okay," Annabeth said slowly. "The House of Life...how does that work?"

Zia spoke up this time. "There are three hundred and sixty nomes, as Amos said, all over the world. When magicians are nine or ten years old, they are taken to the First Nome for training. When they graduate, they are assigned to a nome somewhere in the world. There, they defend their area until they die, or if they break the law, they can be reassigned."

"Do you have a leadership system?" Jason asked. Carter shifted uncomfortably, and Sadie smirked at him.

"The most powerful magician in the world is the leader most of the time," Zia explained. "We call them our Chief Lector."

"'Most of the time'?" Annabeth echoed.

Zia smiled. "In the time of war or crisis, our Pharoah is our leader. But he is not needed unless we are called to fight."

"Wow," Piper said. "So you guys have this whole secret society?"

Zia nodded.

"Your magic," Hazel suggested. "You said you cast spells and open portals?"

Sadie took up this one. "Each magician has an area of expertise. I use Divine Words; Isis helps out on that one. Divine Words are the words of creation and chaos. Carter is a combat magician-"

"Giant chicken mode," Percy said, nodding.

Carter rolled his eyes. "It's a hawk."

Annabeth looked between them. "I know that somehow, you two know each other, but how in the world did you meet?"

"A very large crocodile." Carter answered.

Sadie stared at him. "You said you dealt with that by yourself!"

"At least I wasn't stuck studying about cheese demons." Carter shot back.

"Can we go back to the magic, please?" Hazel reminded them.

"Right." Sadie continued. "Anyway, Carter's a combat magician, Zia specializes in fire, and Walt is a _sau_; a charm maker. Magic comes in many forms. Amulets, obelisks, statues, scrolls, potions. See, us magicians have a limited magic store. We use objects to store magic, so we have more of it to use. We also use potions for healing and to refill our magic. If we use magic after we run on empty, we literally burn ourselves up."

"That sounds….I'm just gonna say _ouch_." Percy commented.

Sadie snorted. "That works. But our magic is powerful, trust me. One word and I blew up _many _things."

"It's her favourite spell." Walt added. "She once knocked down a water tower because the hole she blew into the ground was a bit too big."

Sadie rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, when we use magic, we use staffs and wands to help us channel it better."

Percy raised his hand as if he was in a classroom. "I have a question. So, once Carter turned into a bird..."

Sadie groaned. "Carter-,"

"It was my only option!" He protested. "I didn't have enough magic to do any combat magic, so-"

"So you thought, '_I'm gonna turn into a bird and possibly burn myself up! Whee!'_?" Sadie demanded, doing a horrible imitation of Carter's voice.

The demigods chuckled. Carter sighed. "At least I managed to defeat something with the help of Percy. Last time you went on a mission by yourself, you angered a Roman ghost and caused mummies to chase you through a tomb!" He pointed at Walt. "_And _you had Walt with you!"

"He thought I was a priest coming to send him into the afterlife! It wasn't my fault!" Sadie argued. "I even offered him some beef jerky and juice boxes!"

Walt snickered. "You offered Ptah beef jerky and juice boxes, actually."

Sadie threw her hands up. "You're insufferable!"

Walt smirked. "You know you love me."

"Um, bird-changing?" Percy said.

"When your patron god has an animal form, you can change into it." Zia answered. "Horus has a bird form, as does Isis, so Carter and Sadie can turn into birds when they wish."

"Oh." Percy thought for a second. "Does it always leave you with extra feathers?"

Carter rolled his eyes. "No, Camper Boy. Only messy transformations leave you with some bird parts."

"Camper Boy?" Percy protested.

Annabeth cleared her throat. "Enough. Is there anything else we need to know?" Then she remembered something. "Right, portals!"

"Portals are doorways we summon through the Duat." Zia told her. "We can travel anywhere instantly, but portals can only be opened at obelisks, no matter how weak. That's why Sadie moved one to her school."

Sadie wrinkled her nose. "I like that school, but some of the girls are the worst."

"I think that's it." Carter said. "Now you know everything."

Walt sighed and looked towards the locked door. "I guess we better keep reading if we want to get out of here."

**Not gonna lie, that was really fun to write. Next up is Chapter 7: **_**I Drop a Little Man on His Head**_**. Stay tuned!**

**Replies….**

**addieb531: Lol, here's a little more. Thank you! You're quite welcome. Thanks for your review! **

**kiwikraz: Now they know everything! Yup, not dead. Here's your chapter! I will always acknowledge your existence. Thanks for your review!**

**DaEgyptianRaven! Thank you! Wow, thanks! And thank **_**you **_**for leaving a review.**


	9. Chapter 7

**Here we are! Just as promised. Anyway, I have a question. A reviewer, DevilishPixelation1006, asked if I could add Magnus Chase into the story. So here's my question: Are there any characters you'd prefer to have in the story? I can add them in if you want.**

**Another thing: I have decided that after the Kane Chronicles, I will do Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It will be a bit, 'cause I have to finish the Kane Chronicles, but after that I'll start The Lightning Thief. Anyway, enjoy this chapter!**

Leo began the next chapter.

**7\. I Drop a Little Man on His Head **

**HONESTLY, CARTER IS SO THICK sometimes I can't believe we're related. **

**I mean when someone says** _**I forbid it**_**, that's a good sign it's worth doing. **

"No, it doesn't!" Carter said, exasperated.

"It absolutely does, Carter." Sadie answered.

**I made for the library straightaway. **

"**Hold on!" Carter cried. "You can't just—" **

"**Brother dear," I said, "did your soul leave your body again while Amos was talking, or did you actually hear him? Egyptian gods real. Red Lord bad. Red Lord's birthday: very soon, very bad. House of Life: fussy old magicians who hate our family because Dad was a bit of a rebel, whom by the way you could take a lesson from. Which leaves us—just us—with Dad missing, an evil god about to destroy the world, and an uncle who just jumped off the building—and I can't actually blame him." **

**I took a breath. [Yes, Carter, I do have to breathe occasionally.] **

Laughs went around the room.

"**Am I missing anything? Oh, yes, I also have a brother who is supposedly quite powerful from an ancient bloodline, blah, blah, et cetera, but is too afraid to visit a library. Now, coming or not?" **

**Carter blinked as if I'd just hit him, which I suppose I had in a way. "I just…" He faltered. "I just think we should be careful." **

**I realized the poor boy was quite scared, which I couldn't hold against him, but it did startle me. Carter was my big brother, after all—older, more sophisticated, the one who traveled the world with Dad. Big brothers are the ones who are supposed to pull their punches. Little sisters—well, we should be able to hit as hard as we like, shouldn't we? **

"Not when you hit really hard!" Carter complained. "Plus, you can use the Divine Words and blow me up if you feel like it!"

"I wouldn't blow you up," Sadie frowned. "I may set your hair on fire, though. Zia can help!"

"Zia, please." Carter begged. "She listens to you!"

Zia laughed. "Sadie doesn't listen to anyone."

**But I realized that possibly, just possibly, I'd been a bit harsh with him. "Look," I said. "We need to help Dad, yes? There's got to be some powerful stuff in that library, otherwise Amos wouldn't keep it locked up. You do want to help Dad?" **

**Carter shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah…of course." **

**Well, that was one problem sorted, so we headed for the library. But as soon as Khufu saw what we were up to, he scrambled off the sofa with his basketball and jumped in front of the library doors. Who knew baboons were so speedy? He barked at us, and I have to say baboons have enormous fangs. And they're not any prettier when they've been chewing up exotic pink birds. **

Piper wrinkled her nose. "I didn't need that image."

**Carter tried to reason with him. "Khufu, we're not going to steal anything. We just want—" **

"**Agh!" Khufu dribbled his basketball angrily. **

"**Carter," I said, "you're not helping. Look here, Khufu. I have…ta-da!" I held up a little yellow box of cereal I'd taken from the buffet table. "Cheerios! Ends with an -o. Yumsies!" **

"He really only eats things that end in -o?" Frank asked.

"Yeah," Carter responded. "His favourite is Jell-O. Because of the capital -o"

"**Aghhh!" Khufu grunted, more excited now than angry. **

"**Want it?" I coaxed. "Just take it to the couch and pretend you didn't see us, yes?" **

**I threw the cereal towards the couch, and the baboon lunged after it. He grabbed the box in midair and was so excited, he ran straight up the wall and sat on the fireplace mantel, where he began gingerly picking out Cheerios and eating them one at a time.**

"That sounds tedious." Annabeth commented.

**Carter looked at me with grudging admiration. **

"I am admirable." Sadie smirked.

"**How did you—" **

"**Some of us think ahead. Now, let's open these doors." That was not so easily done. They were made of thick wood laced with giant steel chains and padlocked. Complete overkill. **

**Carter stepped forward. He tried to raise the doors by lifting his hand, which had been quite impressive the night before, only now accomplished nothing. He shook the chains the old-fashioned way, then yanked on the padlocks. "No good," he said. **

**Ice needles tingled on the back of my neck. It was almost as if someone—or something—was whispering an idea in my head. **

"Why do I have a feeling something's going to happen?" Leo paused and asked.

"With Sadie, something always happens." Walt said. Sadie glared at him.

"**What was that word Amos used at breakfast with the saucer?" **

"**For 'join'?" Carter said. "**_**Hi-nehm**_ **or something." **

"**No, the other one, for 'destroy'." **

"Why do I have a bad feeling?" Percy asked.

"Sadie." Was all Carter answered.

"**Uh, **_**ha-di**_**. But you'd need to know magic and the hieroglyphics, wouldn't you? And even then—" **

**I raised my hand toward the door. I pointed with two fingers and my thumb—an odd gesture I'd never made before, like a make-believe gun except with the thumb parallel to the ground. "**_**Ha-di**_**!" **

**Bright gold hieroglyphs burned against the largest padlock. And the doors exploded. **

**Carter hit the floor as chains shattered and splinters flew all over the Great Room. When the dust cleared, Carter got up, covered in wood shavings. I seemed to be fine. Muffin circled my feet, mewing contentedly, as if this were all very normal. **

**Carter stared at me. "How exactly—" **

"**Don't know," I admitted. "But the library's open." **

"You don't say?" Percy said.

"**Think you overdid it a little? We're going to be in so much trouble—" **

"**We'll just figure out a way to zap the door back, won't we?" **

"**No more zapping, please," Carter said. "That explosion could've killed us." **

"No, it wouldn't have." Sadie rolled her eyes. "Maybe a few broken limbs, but we would've been fine."

"_Fine_?" Carter repeated.

"Let's keep going," Walt said quickly.

"**Oh, do you think if you tried that spell on a person—" **

"**No!" He stepped back nervously. **

**I felt gratified that I could make him squirm, but I tried not to smile. "Let's just explore the library, shall we?" **

**The truth was, I couldn't have ha-di-ed anyone. As soon as I stepped forward, I felt so faint that I almost collapsed. Carter caught me as I stumbled. "You okay?" **

"**Fine," I managed, though I didn't feel fine. "I'm tired"—my stomach rumbled—"and famished." **

"**You just ate a huge breakfast." It was true, but I felt as if I hadn't had food in weeks.**

Annabeth frowned. "Why?"

"I drew from myself." Sadie said. "When we use staffs or wands, we can draw from them to make magic easier. But when I first used _ha-di, _I drew from my own magic stores and life force, so it weakened me."

"**Never mind," I told him. "I'll manage." **

**Carter studied me skeptically. "Those hieroglyphs you created were golden. Dad and Amos both used blue. Why?" **

"**Maybe everyone has his own color," I suggested. "Maybe you'll get hot pink." **

"**Very funny." **

"**Come on, pink wizard," I said. "Inside we go." **

**The library was so amazing, I almost forgot my dizziness. It was bigger than I'd imagined, a round chamber sunk deep into solid rock, like a giant well. This didn't make sense, as the mansion was sitting on top of a warehouse, but then again nothing else about the place was exactly normal.**

"Nothing about _us _is normal." Walt grumbled.

**From the platform where we stood, a staircase descended three stories to the bottom floor. The walls, floor, and domed ceiling were all decorated with multicolored pictures of people, gods, and monsters. I'd seen such illustrations in Dad's books (yes, all right, sometimes when I was in the Piccadilly bookshop I'd wander into the Egypt section and sneak a look at Dad's books, just to feel some connection to him, not because I wanted to read them) but the pictures in the books had always been faded and smudged. These in the library looked newly painted, making the entire room a work of art. **

"**It's beautiful," I said. **

**A blue starry sky glittered on the ceiling, but it wasn't a solid field of blue. Rather, the sky was painted in a strange swirling pattern. I realized it was shaped like a woman. She lay curled on her side—her body, arms, and legs dark blue and dotted with stars. Below, the library floor was done in a similar way, the green-and-brown earth shaped into a man's body, dotted with forests and hills and cities. A river snaked across his chest. **

"Who are they?" Hazel asked.

"Nut, the goddess of the sky, and Geb, the god of the earth." Zia answered.

**The library had no books. Not even bookshelves. Instead, the walls were honeycombed with round cubbyholes, each one holding a sort of plastic cylinder.**

**At each of the four compass points, a ceramic statue stood on a pedestal. The statues were half-size humans wearing kilts and sandals, with glossy black wedge-shaped haircuts and black eyeliner around their eyes. [Carter says the eyeliner stuff is called kohl, as if it matters.] At any rate, one statue held a stylus and scroll. Another held a box. Another held a short, hooked staff. The last was empty-handed. **

"**Sadie." Carter pointed to the center of the room. Sitting on a long stone table was Dad's workbag. **

**Carter started down the stairs, but I grabbed his arm. "Hang on. What about traps?" **

**He frowned. "Traps?" **

"**Didn't Egyptian tombs have traps?" **

"**Well…sometimes. But this isn't a tomb. Besides, more often they had curses, like the burning curse, the donkey curse—" **

"Why do Egyptians even have a donkey curse?" Percy wondered. "You could have so many better ones."

"Do not underestimate the power of the donkey curse." Zia warned, smiling slightly.

"**Oh, lovely. That sounds so much better." **

**He trotted down the steps, which made me feel quite ridiculous, as I'm usually the one to forge ahead. But I supposed if someone had to get cursed with a burning skin rash or attacked by a magical donkey, it was better Carter than me.**

"Hey!" Carter complained.

"Sorry, brother dear, but it's true." Sadie smirked.

**We made it to the middle of the room with no excitement. Carter opened the bag. Still no traps or curses. He brought out the strange box Dad had used in the British Museum. It was made of wood, and about the right size to hold a loaf of French bread. The lid was decorated much like the library, with gods and monsters and sideways-walking people. **

"**How did the Egyptians move like that?" I wondered. "All sideways with their arms and legs out. It seems quite silly." **

Carter facepalmed. "They didn't walk like that."

**Carter gave me one of his **_**God, you're stupid**_ **looks. "They didn't walk like that in real life, Sadie." **

"**Well, why are they painted like that, then?" **

"**They thought paintings were like magic. If you painted yourself, you had to show all your arms and legs. Otherwise, in the afterlife you might be reborn without all your pieces." **

"**Then why the sideways faces? They never look straight at you. Doesn't that mean they'll lose the other side of their face?" **

**Carter hesitated. "I think they were afraid the picture would be **_**too**_ **human if it was looking right at you. It might try to **_**become**_ **you."**

"Like, the picture would take over you?" Jason asked.

"They had a lot of fears because of the spiritual world." Carter answered. "They somehow knew the Duat was real, even if some of them weren't magicians and couldn't access it."

"**So is there anything they weren't afraid of?" **

"**Little sisters," Carter said. "If they talked too much, the Egyptians threw them to the crocodiles." **

**He had me for a second. I wasn't used to him displaying a sense of humor. Then I punched him. "Just open the bloody box." **

**The first thing he pulled out was a lump of white gunk. "Wax," Carter pronounced. **

"What's the wax for?" Annabeth asked.

"_Shabti,_" Zia answered. "They'll be explained later."

"**Fascinating." I picked up a wooden stylus and a palette with small indentations in its surface for ink, then a few glass jars of the ink itself—black, red, and gold. "And a prehistoric painting set." **

**Carter pulled out several lengths of brown twine, a small ebony cat statue, and a thick roll of paper. No, not paper. Papyrus. I remembered Dad explaining how the Egyptians made it from a river plant because they never invented paper. The stuff was so thick and rough, it made me wonder if the poor Egyptians had had to use toilet papyrus. If so, no wonder they walked sideways. **

Everyone burst into laughter.

"Classic Sadie." Walt wheezed, chuckling.

**Finally I pulled out a wax figurine. "Ew," I said. **

**He was a tiny man, crudely fashioned, as if the maker had been in a hurry. His arms were crossed over his chest, his mouth was open, and his legs were cut off at the knees. A lock of human hair was wrapped around his waist. **

"That's a bit weird." Percy commented.

**Muffin jumped on the table and sniffed the little man. She seemed to think him quite interesting.**

"**There's nothing here," Carter said. **

"**What do you want?" I asked. "We've got wax, some toilet papyrus, an ugly statue—" **

"**Something to explain what happened to Dad. How do we get him back? Who was that fiery man he summoned?" **

**I held up the wax man. "You heard him, warty little troll. Tell us what you know." **

"Something's going to happen, isn't it." Frank said.

**I was just messing about. But the wax man became soft and warm like flesh. He said, "I answer the call." **

**I screamed and dropped him on his tiny head. Well, can you blame me? **

"No, not really." Piper responded.

"**Ow!" he said. Muffin came over to have a sniff, and the little man started cursing in another language, possibly Ancient Egyptian. When that didn't work, he screeched in English: "Go away! I'm not a mouse!"**

**I scooped up Muffin and put her on the floor. Carter's face had gone as soft and waxy as the little man's. "What are you?" he asked. **

"**I'm a **_**shabti**_**, of course!" The figurine rubbed his dented head. He still looked quite lumpish, only now he was a living lump. "Master calls me Doughboy, though I find the name insulting. You may call me Supreme-Force-Who-Crushes-His-Enemies!" **

"**All right, Doughboy," I said. **

Leo snorted.

**He scowled at me, I think, though it was hard to tell with his mashed-up face. "You weren't supposed to trigger me! Only the master does that." **

"**The master, meaning Dad," I guessed. "Er, Julius Kane?" **

"**That's him," Doughboy grumbled. "Are we done yet? Have I fulfilled my service?" **

**Carter stared at me blankly, but I thought I was beginning to understand. "So, Doughboy," I told the lump. "You were triggered when I picked you up and gave you a direct order: Tell us what you know. Is that correct?"**

"So, _shabti _are magical statues?" Piper wondered.

"Basically," Carter answered.

**Doughboy crossed his stubby arms. "You're just toying with me now. Of course that's correct. Only the master is supposed to be able to trigger me, by the way. I don't know how you did it, but he'll blast you to pieces when he finds out." **

**Carter cleared his throat. "Doughboy, the master is our dad, and he's missing. He's been magically sent away somehow and we need your help—"**

"**Master is gone?" Doughboy smiled so widely, I thought his wax face would split open. **

"Wait, what?" Annabeth asked. "Shouldn't he be sad his master is gone?"

Sadie shook her head. "Now that he has no master, he's free to do whatever he wants."

"**Free at last! See you, suckers!" He lunged for the end of the table but forgot he had no feet. He landed on his face, then began crawling toward the edge, dragging himself with his hands. "Free! Free!" **

**He fell off the table and onto the floor with a thud, but that didn't seem to discourage him. "Free! Free!" He made it another centimeter or two before I picked him up and threw him in Dad's magic box. Doughboy tried to get out, but the box was just tall enough that he couldn't reach the rim. I wondered if it had been designed that way. **

"Probably," Zia said.

"**Trapped!" he wailed. "Trapped!" **

"**Oh, shut up," I told him. "I'm the mistress now. And you'll answer my questions." **

**Carter raised his eyebrow. "How come you get to be in charge?" **

"**Because I was smart enough to activate him." **

"**You were just joking around!" I ignored my brother, which is one of my many talents. "Now, Doughboy, first off, what's a **_**shabti**_**?" **

"**Will you let me out of the box if I tell you?" **

"**You have to tell me," I pointed out. "And no, I won't." **

**He sighed. "**_**Shabti**_ **means answerer, as even the stupidest slave could tell you."**

"He's a very rude little statue, by the way." Sadie chimed in. "We turned him into a coat, and I like him better that way."

"...What?" Jason frowned. "A _coat_?"

"You'll see." Carter responded.

**Carter snapped his fingers. "I remember now! The Egyptians made models out of wax or clay—servants to do every kind of job they could imagine in the afterlife. They were supposed to come to life when their master called, so the deceased person could, like, kick back and relax and let the **_**shabti**_ **do all his work for eternity." **

"**First," Doughboy snipped, "that is typical of humans! Lazing around while we do all the work. Second, afterlife work is only one function of **_**shabti**_**. We are also used by magicians for a great number of things in this life, because magicians would be total incompetents without us. **

"Not true." Zia and Sadie chorused together.

**Third, if you know so much, why are you asking me?" **

"**Why did Dad cut off your legs," I wondered, "and leave you with a mouth?" **

"**I—" Doughboy clapped his little hands over his mouth. "Oh, very funny. Threaten the wax statue. Big bully! He cut my legs off so I wouldn't run away or come to life in perfect form and try to kill him, naturally. Magicians are very mean. They maim statues to control them. They are afraid of us!" **

"**Would you come to life and try to kill him, had he made you perfectly?" **

"Pretty much all intelligent _shabtis _would." Zia said.

"**Probably," Doughboy admitted. "Are we done?" **

"**Not by half," I said. "What happened to our dad?" **

**Doughboy shrugged. "How should I know? But I see his wand and staff aren't in the box."**

"**No," Carter said. "The staff—the thing that turned into a snake—it got incinerated. And the wand…is that the boomerang thing?" **

"**The boomerang thing?" Doughboy said. "Gods of Eternal Egypt, you're dense. **

"I tell him that everyday." Sadie muttered. Carter rolled his eyes.

**Of course that's his wand." **

"**It got shattered," I said. **

"**Tell me how," Doughboy demanded. Carter told him the story. I wasn't sure that was the best idea, but I supposed a ten-centimeter-tall statue couldn't do us that much harm. "This is wonderful!" Doughboy cried. **

"**Why?" I asked. "Is Dad still alive?" **

"**No!" Doughboy said. "He's almost certainly dead. **

"Yes," Piper grumbled. "Wonderful."

**The five gods of the Demon Days released? Wonderful! And anyone who duels with the Red Lord—" **

"**Wait," I said. "I order you to tell me what happened." **

"**Ha!" Doughboy said. "I only have to tell you what I **_**know**_**. Making educated guesses is a completely different task. I declare my service fulfilled!" With that, he turned back to lifeless wax. **

"**Wait!" I picked him up again and shook him. "Tell me your educated guesses!" Nothing happened. **

"**Maybe he's got a timer," Carter said. "Like only once a day. Or maybe you broke him." **

Everyone laughed. Sadie glared. "I did not break him."

"**Carter, make a helpful suggestion! What do we do now?" **

**He looked at the four ceramic statues on their pedestals. "Maybe—" "Other **_**shabti**_**?" **

"**Worth a shot." **

**If the statues were answerers, they weren't very good at it. We tried holding them while giving them orders, though they were quite heavy. We tried pointing at them and shouting. We tried asking nicely. They gave us no answers at all. I grew so frustrated I wanted to ha-di them into a million pieces, but I was still so hungry and tired, I had the feeling that spell would not be good for my health. **

"Yeah, it wouldn't be." Walt told her.

**Finally we decided to check the cubbyholes round the walls. The plastic cylinders were the kind you might find at a drive-through bank—the kind that shoot up and down the pneumatic tubes. Inside each case was a papyrus scroll. Some looked new. Some looked thousands of years old. Each canister was labeled in hieroglyphs and (fortunately) in English. "**_**The Book of the Heavenly Cow**_**," Carter read on one. "What kind of name is that? What've you got, **_**The Heavenly Badger**_**?" **

Sadie snorted, while Zia and Walt chuckled.

"**No," I said. "**_**The Book of Slaying Apophis**_**." **

The magicians grimaced.

**Muffin meowed in the corner. When I looked over, her tail was puffed up. "What's wrong with her?" I asked. **

"**Apophis was a giant snake monster," Carter muttered. "He was bad news." Muffin turned and raced up the stairs, back into the Great Room. Cats. No accounting for them. Carter opened another scroll. "Sadie, look at this." He'd found a papyrus that was quite long, and most of the text on it seemed to be lines of hieroglyphs. "Can you read any of this?" Carter asked. **

**I frowned at the writing, and the odd thing was, I couldn't read it—except for one line at the top. "Only that bit where the title should be. It says…Blood of the Great House. What does that mean?" **

"**Great house," Carter mused. "What do the words sound like in Egyptian?" **

"**Per-roh. Oh, it's pharaoh, isn't it? But I thought a pharaoh was a king?" **

"**It is," Carter said. "The word literally means 'great house,' like the king's mansion. Sort of like referring to the president as 'the White House.' So here it probably means more like Blood of the Pharaohs, all of them, the whole lineage of all the dynasties, not just one guy." **

"**So why do I care about the pharaohs' blood, and why can't I read any of the rest?" **

**Carter stared at the lines. Suddenly his eyes widened. "They're names. Look, they're all written inside cartouches." **

"**Excuse me?" I asked, because **_**cartouche**_ **sounded like a rather rude word, and I pride myself on knowing those. **

Sadie shrugged, smirking. Leo snickered.

"**The circles," Carter explained. "They symbolize magic ropes. They're supposed to protect the holder of the name from evil magic." He eyed me. "And possibly also from other magicians reading their names." **

"**Oh, you're mental," I said. But I looked at the lines, and saw what he meant. All the other words were protected by cartouches, and I couldn't make sense of them. **

"**Sadie," Carter said, his voice urgent. He pointed to a cartouche at the very end of the list—the last entry in what looked to be a catalogue of thousands. Inside the circle were two simple symbols, a basket and a wave. **

"**KN," Carter announced. "I know this one. It's our name, KANE." **

"**Missing a few letters, isn't it?" **

**Carter shook his head. "Egyptians usually didn't write vowels. Only consonants. You have to figure out the vowel sounds from context." **

"**They really were nutters.**

The demigods laughed. Zia rolled her eyes.

**So that could be KON or IKON or KNEE or AKNE." **

"**It could be," Carter agreed. "But it's our name, Kane. I asked Dad to write it for me in hieroglyphs once, and that's how he did it. But why are we in this list? And what is 'blood of the pharaohs'?" **

**That icy tingle started on the back of my neck. I remembered what Amos had said, about both sides of our family being very ancient. Carter's eyes met mine, and judging from his expression, he was having the same thought. "There's no way," I protested. **

"**Must be some kind of joke," he agreed. "Nobody keeps family records that far back." **

"We do," Walt muttered.

**I swallowed, my throat suddenly very dry. So many odd things had happened to us in the last day, but it was only when I saw our name in that book that I finally began to believe all this mad Egyptian stuff was real. Gods, magicians, monsters…and our family was tied into it. Ever since breakfast, when it occurred to me that Dad had been trying to bring Mum back from the dead, a horrible emotion had been trying to take hold of me. And it wasn't dread. Yes, the whole idea was creepy, much creepier than the shrine my grandparents kept in the hall cupboard to my dead mother. And yes, I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I'm a liar. The truth was, I'd had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. **

Carter smirked at Sadie sadly; she returned it.

**To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to. The feeling I was trying to shake was hope. I knew I was setting myself up for colossal hurt. But if it really were possible to bring her back, then I would've blown up any number of Rosetta Stones to make it happen. "Let's keep looking," I said. **

**After a few more minutes, I found a picture of some of animal-headed gods, five in a row, with a starry woman figure arching over them protectively like an umbrella. Dad had released five gods. Hmm. "Carter," I called. "What's this, then?" **

**He came to have a look and his eyes lit up. "That's it!" he announced. "These five…and up here, their mother, Nut." **

**I laughed. "A goddess named Nut? Is her last name Case?" **

"That's rude," Zia grumbled.

"I wasn't the one who named her." Sadie pointed out.

"**Very funny," Carter said. "She was the goddess of the sky." He pointed to the painted ceiling—the lady with the blue star-spangled skin, same as in the scroll. **

"**So what about her?" I asked. **

**Carter knit his eyebrows. "Something about the Demon Days. It had to do with the birth of these five gods, but it's been a long time since Dad told me the story. This whole scroll is written in hieratic, I think. That's like hieroglyph cursive. Can you read it?" **

**I shook my head. Apparently, my particular brand of insanity only applied to regular hieroglyphs. **

The demigods chuckled.

"**I wish I could find the story in English," Carter said. Just then there was a cracking noise behind us. The empty-handed clay statue hopped off his pedestal and marched towards us. Carter and I scrambled to get out of his way, but he walked straight past us, grabbed a cylinder from its cubbyhole and brought it to Carter. **

"**It's a retrieval **_**shabti**_**," I said. "A clay librarian!" **

**Carter swallowed nervously and took the cylinder. "Um…thanks." The statue marched back to his pedestal, jumped on, and hardened again into regular clay. **

"**I wonder…" I faced the **_**shabti**_**. "Sandwich and chips, please!"**

**Sadly, none of the statues jumped down to serve me. Perhaps food wasn't allowed in the library. **

Carter frowned. "I actually have no idea if it is."

"But Carter, you're supposed to know _everything_." Sadie teased.

**Carter uncapped the cylinder and unrolled the papyrus. He sighed with relief. "This version is in English." As he scanned the text, his frown got deeper. **

"**You don't look happy," I noticed. "Because I remember the story now. The five gods…if Dad really released them, it isn't good news." **

"Is it ever?" Annabeth wondered.

"**Hang on," I said. "Start from the beginning." **

**Carter took a shaky breath. "Okay. So the sky goddess, Nut, was married to the earth god, Geb." **

"**That would be this chap on the floor?" I tapped my foot on the big green man with the river and hills and forests all over his body. **

"**Right," Carter said. "Anyway, Geb and Nut wanted to have kids, but the king of the gods, Ra—he was the sun god—heard this bad prophecy that a child of Nut—" **

"**Child of Nut," I snickered. "Sorry, go on." **

"—**a child of Geb and Nut would one day replace Ra as king. So when Ra learned that Nut was pregnant, Ra freaked out. He forbade Nut to give birth to her children on any day or night of the year." **

**I crossed my arms. "So what, she had to stay pregnant forever? That's awfully mean." **

The girls in the room winced.

"That's pretty mean." Piper agreed.

**Carter shook his head. "Nut figured out a way. She set up a game of dice with the moon god, Khons. Every time Khons lost, he had to give Nut some of his moonlight. He lost so many times, Nut won enough moonlight to create five new days and tag them on to the end of the year." **

"**Oh, please," I said. "First, how can you gamble moonlight? And if you did, how could you make extra days out of it?" **

"**It's a story!" Carter protested. "Anyway, the Egyptian calendar had three hundred and sixty days in the year, just like the three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle. Nut created five days and added them to the end of the year—days that were not part of the regular year." **

"**The Demon Days," I guessed. "So the myth explains why a year has three hundred and sixty-five days. And I suppose she had her children—" **

"**During those five days," Carter agreed. "One kid per day." **

"**Again, how do you have five children in a row, each on a different day?" **

"**They're gods," Carter said. "They can do stuff like that." **

"Gods are so weird." Sadie muttered. "Especially Egyptian gods."

"**Makes as much sense as the name Nut. But please, go on." **

"**So when Ra found out, he was furious, but it was too late. The children were already born. Their names were Osiris—" **

"**The one Dad was after." **

"**Then Horus, Set, Isis, and, um…" Carter consulted his scroll. "Nephthys. I always forget that one." **

"I doubt you'll forget it now." Sadie smirked mischievously. Carter elbowed her in the ribs.

"**And the fiery man in the museum said, **_**you have released all five**_**." **

"**Exactly. What if they were imprisoned together and Dad didn't realize it? They were born together, so maybe they had to be summoned back into the world together. The thing is, one of these guys, Set, was a really bad dude. Like, the villain of Egyptian mythology. The god of evil and chaos and desert storms." **

"It's him, isn't it?" Percy asked. "We always get the worst gods to fight."

**I shivered. "Did he perhaps have something to do with fire?" **

**Carter pointed to one of the figures in the picture. The god had an animal head, but I couldn't quite make out which sort of animal: Dog? Anteater? Evil bunny rabbit? Whichever it was, his hair and his clothes were bright red. **

"**The Red Lord," I said. **

"**Sadie, there's more," Carter said. "Those five days—the Demon Days—were bad luck in Ancient Egypt. You had to be careful, wear good luck charms, and not do anything important or dangerous on those days. And in the British Museum, Dad told Set: They'll stop you before the Demon Days are over." **

"That doesn't sound good." Leo grumbled.

"**Surely you don't think he meant us," I said. "We're supposed to stop this Set character?" **

**Carter nodded. "And if the last five days of our calendar year still count as the Egyptian Demon Days—they'd start on December 27, the day after tomorrow." **

"That's...so soon." Hazel said. "And the Red Lord was born on the third day? That's just four days."

"Our deadlines are often crazy." Walt answered.

**The **_**shabti**_ **seemed to be staring at me expectantly, but I had not the slightest idea what to do. Demon Days and evil bunny gods—if I heard one more impossible thing, my head would explode. And the worst of it? The little insistent voice in the back of my head saying: It's not impossible. To save Dad, we must defeat Set. As if that had been on my to-do list for Christmas hols. See Dad—check. Develop strange powers—check. Defeat an evil god of chaos—check. The whole idea was mad! **

"Our world is mad." Zia muttered.

**Suddenly there was a loud crash, as if something had broken in the Great Room. Khufu began barking in alarm. Carter and I locked eyes. Then we ran for the stairs.**

"The end." Leo said.

"I'll read again." Piper answered.

**That's it for today, mi amigos! Hopefully I can update again tomorrow, or the next day. Thanks for reading! **

**Replies…**

**addieb531: Here's your chapter! Yeah, the Staff of Serapis and the Crown of Ptolemy haven't happened. Thank you! And thanks for the review!**

**kiwikraz: Yeah, it was. Thanks! That's true. Yup, I'm trying to keep up on this story. I have two more to do after this one, so. Always. Thank you for reviewing.**

**DaEgyptianRaven: Thank you! I'm glad to hear that. I hope you liked this chapter, and thanks for the review!**


	10. Chapter 8

**Wow. I have been gone for **_**forever**_**. So sorry about that, loves. My life...well, it's best not to get into it all. Fact, it's absolute madness. I apologize. Anyway, here's an update! I hope you guys like it.**

**8\. Muffin Plays with Knives **

**OUR BABOON WAS GOING completely sky goddess—which is to say, nuts. He swung from column to column, bouncing along the balconies, overturning pots and statues. Then he ran back to the terrace windows, stared outside for a moment, and proceeded to go berserk again. **

**Muffin was also at the window. She crouched on all fours with her tail twitching as if she were stalking a bird. "Perhaps it's just a passing flamingo," I suggested hopefully, but I'm not sure Carter could hear me over the screaming baboon. **

"I couldn't." Carter said helpfully.

**We ran to the glass doors. At first I didn't see any problem. Then water exploded from the pool, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Two enormous creatures, most definitely not flamingos, were thrashing about with our crocodile, Philip of Macedonia. I couldn't make out what they were, only that they were fighting Philip two against one. **

**They disappeared under the boiling water, and Khufu ran screaming through the Great Room again, bonking himself on the head with his empty Cheerios box, which I must say was not particularly helpful. **

Sadie snorted while the others chuckled.

"**Longnecks," Carter said incredulously. "Sadie, did you **_**see**_ **those things?" **

**I couldn't find an answer. Then one of the creatures was thrown out of the pool. It slammed into the doors right in front of us, and I jumped back in alarm. On the other side of the glass was the most terrifying animal I'd ever seen. Its body was like a leopard's—lean and sinewy, with golden spotted fur—but its neck was completely wrong. It was green and scaly and at least as long as the rest of its body. It had a cat's head, but no normal cat's. When it turned its glowing red eyes towards us, it howled, showing a forked tongue and fangs dripping with green venom. **

"That...doesn't sound familiar." Jason said, confused.

"_Egyptian _monsters, Jason." Annabeth replied, sounding as if it should be obvious.

The magicians exchanged looks. What other kinds of monsters were there?

**I realized my legs were shaking and I was making a very undignified whimpering sound. The cat-serpent jumped back into the pool to join its companion in beating up Philip, who spun and snapped but seemed unable to hurt his attackers. "We have to help Philip!" I cried. "He'll be killed!" **

**I reached for the door handle, but Muffin growled at me. Carter said, "Sadie, no! You heard Amos. We can't open the doors for any reason. The house is protected by magic. Philip will have to beat them on his own." **

"**But what if he can't? Philip!" The old crocodile turned. For a second his pink reptilian eye focused on me as if he could sense my concern. Then the cat-snakes bit at his underbelly and Philip rose up so that only the tip of his tail still touched the water. His body began to glow. A low hum filled the air, like an airplane engine starting up. When Philip came down, he slammed into the terrace with all his might. The entire house shook. Cracks appeared in the concrete terrace outside, and the swimming pool split right down the middle as the far end crumbled into empty space. **

"There goes a perfectly good swimming pool." Percy shook his head. "And it was on a _terrace_."

Annabeth smacked his head. "Will you get over it already?"

"**No!" I cried. But the edge of the terrace ripped free, plunging Philip and the monsters straight into the East River. My whole body began to tremble. "He sacrificed himself. He killed the monsters." **

"**Sadie…" Carter's voice was faint. "What if he didn't? What if they come back?" **

"And you jinxed it." Percy muttered.

"**Don't say that!" **

"**I—I recognized them, Sadie. Those creatures. Come on." **

"**Where?" I demanded, but he ran straight back to the library. **

**Carter marched up to the shabti who'd helped us before. "Bring me the…gah, what's it called?" **

"**What?" I asked. **

"**Something Dad showed me. It's a big stone plate or something. Had a picture of the first pharaoh, the guy who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom. His name…" His eyes lit up. "Narmer! Bring me the Narmer Plate!" Nothing happened. "No," Carter decided. "Not a plate. It was…one of those things that holds paint. A palette. Bring me the Narmer Palette!" **

**The empty-handed shabti didn't move, but across the room, the statue with the little hook came to life. He jumped off his pedestal and disappeared in a cloud of dust. A heartbeat later, he reappeared on the table. At his feet was a wedge of flat gray stone, shaped like a shield and about as long as my forearm. "No!" Carter protested. "I meant a picture of it! Oh great, I think this is the real artifact. The shabti must've stolen it from the Cairo Museum. We've got to return—" **

"You _stole _the Narmer Palette?" Annabeth demanded.

"It was just for a little while," Carter protested. "We needed it!"

"**Hang on," I said. "We might as well have a look." The surface of the stone was carved with the picture of a man smashing another man in the face with what looked like a spoon. "That's Narmer with the spoon," I guessed. "Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal?" **

Carter looked like he wanted to facepalm. Annabeth just stared at Sadie.

**Carter shook his head. "He's conquering his enemies and uniting Egypt. See his hat? That's the crown of Lower Egypt, before the two countries united." **

"**The bit that looks like a bowling pin?" **

Carter stifled a groan of indignancy.

"**You're impossible," Carter grumbled. **

"**He looks like Dad, doesn't he?" **

"**Sadie, be serious!" **

"**I **_**am**_ **serious. Look at his profile." **

**Carter decided to ignore me. He examined the stone like he was afraid to touch it. "I need to see the back but I don't want to turn it over. We might damage—" I grabbed the stone and flipped it over. "Sadie! You could've broken it!" **

"**That's what mend spells are for, yes?" We examined the back of the stone, and I had to admit I was impressed by Carter's memory. **

"Ha!" Carter pointed at Sadie triumphantly. Walt chuckled.

**Two cat-snake monsters stood in the center of the palette, their necks entwined. On either side, Egyptian men with ropes were trying to capture the creatures. **

"**They're called serpopards," Carter said. "Serpent leopards." **

"**Fascinating," I said. "But what are serpopards?" **

"**No one knows exactly. Dad thought they were creatures of chaos—very bad news, and they've been around forever. This stone is one of the oldest artifacts from Egypt. Those pictures were carved five thousand years ago." **

"**So why are five-thousand-year-old monsters attacking our house?" **

"I ask the same question everyday." Percy sighed dramatically.

"**Last night, in Phoenix, the fiery man ordered his servants to capture us. He said to send the longnecks first." **

**I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I wished I hadn't chewed my last piece of gum. "Well…good thing they're at the bottom of the East River." **

"Nope," Leo grumbled. "Just watch."

**Just then Khufu rushed into the library, screaming and slapping his head. "Suppose I shouldn't have said that," I muttered. **

**Carter told the shabti to return the Narmer Palette, and both statue and stone disappeared. Then we followed the baboon upstairs. The serpopards were back, their fur wet and slimy from the river, and they weren't happy. They prowled the broken ledge of the terrace, their snake necks whipping round as they sniffed the doors, looking for a way in. They spit poison that steamed and bubbled on the glass. Their forked tongues darted in and out. **

"**Agh, agh!" Khufu picked up Muffin, who was sitting on the sofa, and offered me the cat. **

"Um…" Percy raised his hand as if he was in elementary school. "The _cat_?"

"**I really don't think that will help," I told him. **

"**Agh!" Khufu insisted. **

**Neither Muffin nor cat ended in -o, so I guessed Khufu was not trying to offer me a snack, but I didn't know what he was on about. I took the cat just to shut him up. "Mrow?" Muffin looked up at me. **

"**It'll be all right," I promised, trying not to sound scared out of my mind. "The house is protected by magic." **

"**Sadie," Carter said. "They've found something." **

"The jinx is real." Leo waggled his eyebrows. Hazel rolled her eyes.

**The serpopards had converged at the left-hand door and were intently sniffing the handle. "Isn't it locked?" I asked. Both monsters smashed their ugly faces against the glass. The door shuddered. Blue hieroglyphs glowed along the doorframe, but their light was faint. **

"**I don't like this," Carter murmured. I prayed that the monsters would give up. Or that perhaps Philip of Macedonia would climb back to the terrace (do crocodiles climb?) and renew the fight. Instead, the monsters smashed their heads against the glass again. This time a web of cracks appeared. The blue hieroglyphs flickered and died. **

"Oh, great." Frank mumbled.

"**AGH!" Khufu screamed. He waved his hand vaguely at the cat. **

"**Maybe if I try the ha-di spell," I said. **

**Carter shook his head. "You almost fainted after you blew up those doors. I don't want you passing out, or worse." **

**Carter once again surprised me. He tugged a strange sword from one of Amos's wall displays. The blade had an odd crescent-moon curve and looked horribly impractical. **

"Ah, but look at me now." Carter said whimsically. Sadie shoved his shoulder.

"**You can't be serious," I said. **

"**Unless—unless you've got a better idea," he stammered, his face beading with perspiration. "It's me, you, and the baboon against those **_**things**_**." **

**I'm sure Carter was trying to be brave in his own extremely unbrave way, **

"Hey!"

**but he was shaking worse than I was. If anyone was going to pass out, I feared it would be him, and I didn't fancy him doing that while holding a sharp object. **

**Then the serpopards struck a third time, and the door shattered. We backed up to the foot of Thoth's statue as the creatures stalked into the great room. Khufu threw his basketball, which bounced harmlessly off the first monster's head. **

"The monkey's a butler _and_ can fight?" Percy grumbled.

**Then he launched himself at the serpopard. **

"**Khufu, don't!" Carter yelled. But the baboon sank his fangs into the monster's neck. The serpopard lashed around, trying to bite him. Khufu leaped off, but the monster was quick. It used its head like a bat and smacked poor Khufu in midair, sending him straight through the shattered door, over the broken terrace, and into the void. I wanted to sob, but there wasn't time. **

**The serpopards came toward us. We couldn't outrun them. Carter raised his sword. I pointed my hand at the first monster and tried to speak the ha-di spell, but my voice stuck in my throat. **

"**Mrow!" Muffin said, more insistently. Why was the cat still nestled in my arm and not running away in terror? Then I remembered something Amos had said: Muffin will protect you. **

"Again, the cat?" Leo asked. Then paused. "You know what, why the heck not."

**Was that what Khufu had been trying to remind me? It seemed impossible, but I stammered, "M-muffin, I order you to protect us." **

**I tossed her on the floor. Just for a moment, the silver pendant on her collar seemed to gleam. Then the cat arched her back leisurely, sat down, and began licking a front paw. Well, really, what was I expecting—heroics? The two red-eyed monsters bared their fangs. They raised their heads and prepared to strike—and an explosion of dry air blasted through the room. **

**It was so powerful, it knocked Carter and me to the floor. The serpopards stumbled and backed away. I staggered to my feet and realized that the center of the blast had been **_**Muffin**_**. **

"Magical cats." Hazel sighed.

"Um, sort of." Sadie said.

**My cat was no longer there. In her place was a woman—small and lithe like a gymnast. Her jet-black hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore a skintight leopard-skin jumpsuit and Muffin's pendant around her neck. She turned and grinned at me, and her eyes were still Muffin's—yellow with black feline pupils. "About time," she chided. The serpopards got over their shock and charged the cat woman. Their heads struck with lightning speed. They should've ripped her in two, but the cat lady leaped straight up, flipping three times, and landed above them, perched on the mantel. She flexed her wrists, and two enormous knives shot from her sleeves into her hands. "A-a-ah, fun!" **

"Uh, this lady with knives actually seems kind of dangerous." Frank volunteered timidly.

"To our enemies." Zia's smile was wicked.

**The monsters charged. She launched herself between them, dancing and dodging with incredible grace, letting them lash at her futilely while she threaded their necks together. When she stepped away, the serpopards were hopelessly intertwined. The more they struggled, the tighter the knots became. They trampled back and forth, knocking over furniture and roaring in frustration. "Poor things," the cat woman purred. "Let me help." Her knives flashed, and the two monsters' heads thudded to the floor at her feet. Their bodies collapsed and dissolved into enormous piles of sand. **

"Maybe I'll back Frank's statement." Leo squeaked.

"**So much for my playthings," the woman said sadly. "From sand they come, and to sand they return." She turned towards us, and the knives shot back into her sleeves. "Carter, Sadie, we should leave. Worse will be coming." **

**Carter made a choking sound. "Worse? Who—how—what—" **

"**All in good time." The woman stretched her arms above her head with great satisfaction. "So good to be in human form again! Now, Sadie, can you open us a door through the Duat, please?" **

**I blinked. "Um…no. I mean—I don't know how." **

**The woman narrowed her eyes, clearly disappointed. "Shame. We'll need more power, then. An obelisk." **

"**But that's in London," I protested. "We can't—" **

"**There's a nearer one in Central Park. I try to avoid Manhattan, but this is an emergency. We'll just pop over and open a portal." **

"Everybody avoids Manhattan there, don't they?" Hazel asked.

Annabeth muttered, "With good reason."

"**A portal to where?" I demanded. "Who are you, and why are you my cat?" **

**The woman smiled. "For now, we just want a portal out of danger. As for my name, it's not Muffin, thank you very much. It's—" **

"**Bast," Carter interrupted. "Your pendant—it's the symbol of Bast, goddess of cats. I thought it was just decoration but…that's you, isn't it?" **

Percy blinked slowly. "A goddess...appeared in your living room...and just decided to help you?"

Zia furrowed her brow. "Is that surprising?"

Percy didn't answer.

"**Very good, Carter," Bast said. "Now come, while we can still make it out of here alive."**

"The end," Piper said.

"I'll go." Leo took the book.

**Well, how was it? I'm afraid I might be a bit rusty, to be honest. The next update may be a bit. I'm meeting with some cousins I haven't seen since I was six tomorrow, so wish me luck on that one. Thanks for sticking with me through this long and tedious journey. Until next time. **

**Replies...**

**Guest: Thank you so much! update lol. I'll do my best to update sooner this time. Thanks for the review!**

**IloveCats1: Update for you, my friend. Aw, thanks! I'm currently working on getting my life back together, so hopefully I'll update much sooner next time. Thank you for leaving a review!**

**Guest: Doin' my best here ;). Thanks for the review!**

**wiseguy123: Thank you! Here's one of the many future installments for you. Thanks for reviewing! **

**Thunderblaze: I've seen quite a few myself, so thank you! Yeah, this kind of thing is rarely finished. I hope I can, though. Thank you for your faith. I hope I haven't let you down. Thank you for the kind review!**

**TheRedPhoenix: I'm planning on it :). Thanks for the review! **

**kiwikraz: *winces* Yeah, that's kinda my style, sorry. Yup, it definitely is! No more demigods in the dark. Always, my friend. Thank you for your review!**

**addieb531: Don't worry about it. Really? Thank you so much! I most definitely have! I **_**love **_**that series! My sister and I also obsess over it. Who's your favourite character? Mine's Keefe. I'm planning on it. Thank you for your review! **

**umino hachi: Thanks! Okay, good to know. I will do my best. Yeah, still pondering that particular idea, but those are the main characters I'm thinking of adding in. Thanks for the review!**

**DaEgyptianRaven: Thank you so much! :) Thanks for leaving a review!**


	11. Chapter 9

'**Nother update, my dudes. Hope you like!**

**9\. We Run from Four Guys in Skirts **

**SO, YEAH. OUR CAT WAS A GODDESS. What else is new? **

"Literally everything in our lives was new at that point." Sadie grumbled.

**She didn't give us much time to talk about it. She ordered me to the library to grab my dad's magic kit, and when I came back she was arguing with Sadie about Khufu and Philip. "We have to search for them!" Sadie insisted. **

"**They'll be fine," said Bast. "However, we will not be, unless we leave now."**

**I raised my hand. "Um, excuse me, Miss Goddess Lady? **

Sadie snorted.

**Amos told us the house was—" **

"**Safe?" Bast snorted. "Carter, the defenses were too easily breached. Someone sabotaged them." **

"**What do you mean? Who—" **

"**Only a magician of the House could've done it." **

"**Another magician?" I asked. "Why would another magician want to sabotage Amos's house?" **

"**Oh, Carter," Bast sighed. "So young, so innocent. Magicians are devious creatures. Could be a million reasons why one would backstab another, **

"Magicians _backstab _each other?" Jason asked, surprised.

Carter nodded grimly. "All the time. Magicians have a lot of personal agendas."

**but we don't have time to discuss it. Now, come on!" She grabbed our arms and led us out the front door. She'd sheathed her knives, but she still had some wicked sharp claws for fingernails that hurt as they dug into my skin. **

**As soon as we stepped outside, the cold wind stung my eyes. We climbed down a long flight of metal stairs into the industrial yard that surrounded the factory. Dad's workbag was heavy on my shoulder. The curved sword I'd strapped across my back felt cold against my thin linen clothes. I'd started to sweat during the serpopard attack, and now my perspiration felt like it was turning to ice. **

"TMI. Carter!" Sadie groaned. Zia laughed as Carter blushed.

"Sorry," He mumbled.

**I looked around for more monsters, but the yard seemed abandoned. Old construction equipment lay in rusting heaps—a bulldozer, a crane with a wrecking ball, a couple of cement mixers. Piles of sheet metal and stacks of crates made a maze of obstacles between the house and the street a few hundred yards away. We were about halfway across the yard when an old gray tomcat stepped in our path. One of his ears was torn. His left eye was swollen shut. Judging from his scars, he'd spent most of his life fighting. **

**Bast crouched and stared at the cat. He looked up at her calmly. "Thank you," Bast said. The old tomcat trotted off toward the river. **

"**What was that about?" Sadie asked. **

"**One of my subjects, offering help. He'll spread the news about our predicament. Soon every cat in New York will be on alert." **

"This goddess is being eerily helpful," Percy muttered, a little suspicious.

"**He was so battered," Sadie said. "If he's your subject, couldn't you heal him?" **

"**And take away his marks of honor? A cat's battle scars are part of his identity. I couldn't—" Suddenly Bast tensed. She dragged us behind a stack of crates. **

"**What is it?" I whispered. She flexed her wrists and her knives slid into her hands. She peeped over the top of the crates, every muscle in her body trembling. I tried to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing except the old wrecking-ball crane. Bast's mouth twitched with excitement. Her eyes were fixed on the huge metal ball. I'd seen kittens look like that when they stalked catnip toy mice, or pieces of string, or rubber balls…. Balls? No. Bast was an ancient goddess. Surely she wouldn't— **

Zia let out a small laugh.

"**This could be it." She shifted her weight. "Stay very, very still." **

"**There's no one there," Sadie hissed. **

**I started to say, "**_**Um**_…"

**Bast lunged over the crates. She flew thirty feet through the air, knives flashing, and landed on the wrecking ball with such force that she broke the chain. The cat goddess and the huge metal sphere smashed into the dirt and went rolling across the yard. **

"That's an...interesting image." Frank said.

"_**Rowww**_**!" Bast wailed. The wrecking ball rolled straight over her, but she didn't appear hurt. She leaped off and pounced again. Her knives sliced through the metal like wet clay. Within seconds, the wrecking ball was reduced to a mound of scraps. Bast sheathed her blades. "Safe now!" **

**Sadie and I looked at each other. "You saved us from a metal ball," Sadie said. **

"**You never know," Bast said. "It could've been hostile." **

Sadie shook her head lovingly while Carter laughed. "She's such a character, honestly."

**Just then a deep **_**boom**_**! shook the ground. I looked back at the mansion. Tendrils of blue fire curled from the top windows. "Come on," Bast said. "Our time is up!" **

**I thought maybe she'd whisk us off by magic, or at least hail a taxi. Instead, Bast borrowed a silver Lexus convertible. "Oh, yes," she purred. "I like this one! Come along, children." **

"**But this isn't yours," I pointed out. **

"You have stolen your first car," Percy announced comically. "Such an important moment in your life."

"**My dear, I'm a cat. Everything I see is mine." She touched the ignition and the keyhole sparked. The engine began to purr. [No, Sadie. Not like a cat, like an engine.] **

"**Bast," I said, "you can't just—" **

**Sadie elbowed me. "We'll work out how to return it later, Carter. Right now we've got an emergency." She pointed back toward the mansion. Blue flames and smoke now billowed from every window. But that wasn't the scary part—coming down the stairs were four men carrying a large box, like an oversize coffin with long handles sticking out at both ends. The box was covered with a black shroud and looked big enough for at least two bodies. The four men wore only kilts and sandals. Their coppery skin glinted in the sun as if made of metal. **

"Sounds fun." Jason said.

"**Oh, that's bad," Bast said. "In the car, please." **

**I decided not to ask questions. Sadie beat me to the shotgun seat so I climbed in back. The four metallic guys with the box were racing across the yard, coming straight for us at an unbelievable speed. Before I even had my seat belt on, Bast hit the gas. **

**We tore through the streets of Brooklyn, weaving insanely through traffic, riding over sidewalks, narrowly missing pedestrians. Bast drove with reflexes that were…well, catlike. Any human trying to drive so fast would've had a dozen wrecks, but she got us safely onto the Williamsburg Bridge. I thought for sure we must've lost our pursuers, but when I looked back, the four copper men with the black box were weaving in and out of traffic. **

That was met with many groans around the room.

"Of course they can't just be slow." Piper muttered.

**They appeared to be jogging at a normal pace, but they passed cars that were doing fifty. Their bodies blurred like choppy images in an old movie, as if they were out of sync with the regular stream of time. **

"Okay, that's weird." Annabeth said.

"**What are they?" I asked. "Shabti?" **

"**No, carriers." Bast glanced in the rearview mirror. "Summoned straight from the Duat. They'll stop at nothing to find their victims, throw them in the sedan—" **

"**The what?" Sadie interrupted. **

"**The large box," Bast said. "It's a kind of carriage. The carriers capture you, beat you senseless, throw you in, and carry you back to their master. They never lose their prey, and they never give up." **

"Ouch," Leo paused to wince.

"**But what do they want us for?" **

"**Trust me," Bast growled, "you don't want to know." **

**I thought about the fiery man last night in Phoenix—how he'd fried one of his servants into a grease spot. I was pretty sure I didn't want to meet him face-to-face again. "Bast," I said, "if you're a goddess, can't you just snap your fingers and disintegrate those guys? Or wave your hand and teleport us away?" **

"**Wouldn't that be nice? But my power in this host is limited." **

"Host?" Annabeth asked.

"You'll see," Sadie replied.

"**You mean Muffin?" Sadie asked. "But you're not a cat anymore." **

"**She's still my host, Sadie, my anchor on this side of the Duat—and a very imperfect one. Your call for help allowed me to assume human shape, but that alone takes a great deal of power. Besides, even when I'm in a powerful host, Set's magic is stronger than mine." **

"**Could you please say something I actually understand?" I pleaded. **

"I thought you understood everything!" Sadie gasped, mock surprised. Carter rolled his eyes.

"**Carter, we don't have time for a full discussion on gods and hosts and the limits of magic! We have to get you to safety." Bast floored the accelerator and shot up the middle of the bridge.**

**The four carriers with the sedan raced after us, blurring the air as they moved, but no cars swerved to avoid them. No one panicked or even looked at them. "How can people not see them?" I said. "Don't they notice four copper men in skirts running up the bridge with a weird black box?" **

"The Mist." Hazel said quietly.

Walt squinted at her. "The what?"

"Nevermind," She answered.

**Bast shrugged. "Cats can hear many sounds you can't. Some animals see things in the ultraviolet spectrum that are invisible to humans. Magic is similar. Did you notice the mansion when you first arrived?" **

"**Well…no." **

"**And you are born to magic," Bast said. "Imagine how hard it would be for a regular mortal." **

"**Born to magic?" I remembered what Amos had said about our family being in the House of Life for a long time. "If magic, like, runs in the family, why haven't I ever been able to do it before?" **

**Bast smiled in the mirror. "Your sister understands." **

**Sadie's ears turned red. "No, I don't! I still can't believe you're a goddess. All these years, you've been eating crunchy treats, sleeping on my head—" **

The demigods laughed. "You had a _goddess_," Percy wheezed, "sleeping on your head for years?"

"I didn't know she was a goddess." Sadie grumbled, though she was smiling.

"**I made a deal with your father," Bast said. "He let me remain in the world as long as I assumed a minor form, a normal housecat, so I could protect and watch over you. It was the least I could do after—" She stopped abruptly. **

**A horrible thought occurred to me. My stomach fluttered, and it had nothing to do with how fast we were going. "After our mom's death?" I guessed. Bast stared straight ahead out the windshield. "That's it, isn't it?" I said. "Dad and Mom did some kind of magic ritual at Cleopatra's Needle. Something went wrong. Our mom died and…and they released you?" **

"That's an oddly specific answer." Annabeth muttered.

"It just all kind of...clicked, I guess." Carter shrugged.

"**That's not important right now," Bast said. "The point is I agreed to look after Sadie. And I will." She was hiding something. I was sure of it, but her tone made it clear that the subject was closed. **

"**If you gods are so powerful and helpful," I said, "why does the House of Life forbid magicians from summoning you?"**

"They could also summon evil gods, if it was legal." Piper pointed out.

Zia nodded. "Part of why it was forbidden."

**Bast swerved into the fast lane. "Magicians are paranoid. Your best hope is to stay with me. We'll get as far away as possible from New York. Then we'll get help and challenge Set." **

"**What help?" Sadie asked. **

**Bast raised an eyebrow. "Why, we'll summon more gods, of course."**

"Done." Leo announced. "So, you learned your cat is a goddess, your giant house exploded, and there are four guys in skirts chasing you."

"Yup." Sadie nodded.

"Why is Set so interested in you?" Annabeth asked.

Carter gave her a small smile. "You'll see. It's a little crazy."

"Our lives revolve around that word." Percy grumbled. "That, and 'weird'."

"I'll read next." Zia said.

**And there's the end of that one. I hope it was up to y'all's expectations. I will update when I can. See ya!**

**Replies….**

**Guest: I'm hoping to, but I guess we'll see. Thanks for your review!**

**kiwikraz: Lol, she totally is. Sorry about that! I honestly love Bast. Yeah, I was! Omg, that's exactly what I think. Keefe is way too good for Sophie. Thank you! It went well, I was so happy to see them again! I will always :). Thank you for reviewing! **


End file.
